Max I. Walker: Ready and Right

READY AND RIGHT

Celebrating a century of service in greater Omaha

MAX I. WALKER SPONSORED SECTION | OMAHA WORLD-HERALD | SUNDAY, MARCH 12, 2017

OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

MAX I. WALKER: AN INTRODUCTION

Good fortune, hard work foundation for legacy O

n March 17, 1917, a young entrepreneur took over a small dry cleaning shop in north Omaha, reopening it that day under a new name.

Over the last 100 years, that small business has grown into one of the region’s most widely known business names while weathering the economic effects of wars, the Great Depression, a technological revolution and far-reaching Max I. cultural changes.

Walker The now-familiar name of both the young businessman and the little shop: Max I. Walker.

Today, the company is managed by a fourth generation of the Walker family, and the fifth generation has joined the payroll. In celebration of the company’s 100-year anniversary and in honor of the hard work and business acumen of its founders, Max Isaac and Bertha Myrtle Walker, the family has published the company’s history. That book is excerpted in this sponsored special section.

In many ways, the history of the little shop that grew into a respected corporation mirrors that of Omaha and the surrounding area over the

last century.

The Walkers were like many of their generation: hard-working, humble people who experienced some good fortune and some hardships while making the most of every opportunity.

While Max I. worked a string of odd jobs, he built up enough savings to make a loan to a struggling business at 2410 Ames Ave. When that business failed, the Walkers took over … and the story of Max I. Walker Inc. began.

“There were many hard knocks,” Max I. Walker once said. “Many discouraging times and lots of mighty hard work during long hours, but these were far outnumbered by the many good things. Many happy days and hours and the extreme satisfaction of the acceptance Omaha has given to our firm.”

In dedicating “Max I. Walker: Ready and Right for 100 Years,” Rob Walker, president, and Lisa WalkerSekundiak, vice president, salute their great-grandparents for their wisdom, endurance and values.

“Our ‘family’ reaches far beyond those who have a Walker surname,” they wrote. “Our family is all the past, present and future employees who have worked for us. We are proud and appreciative of all of them.”

ABOUT THIS SECTION “Ready and Right” is a special section sponsored by Max I. Walker Inc. to commemorate its 100th year of business in greater Omaha. Content is condensed from “Max I. Walker: Ready and Right for 100 Years” by Legacy Preservation LLC. All rights reserved.

World-Herald project editor Chris Christen, 402444-1094, chris. christen@owh.com Deputy project editor Howard K. Marcus, 402-444-1397, howard.marcus@ owh.com Designer Kiley Cruse Copy editor Stacie Thomas Hamel

Max I. and Bertha Myrtle Walker and family in 1918. He is the namesake behind the Max I. Walker dry cleaning business that marks its 100th anniversary this month.

On the cover Robert Walker Sr., who led the transition from dry cleaning deliveries to satellite stores.

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FROM REPAIRING PIANOS TO CLEANING CLOTHES

‘Salty old bird’ outworks, outthinks competition P

ianos needed repairing.

That was the work that brought Max I. Walker, a trained mechanic, to Omaha from Kansas City, along with his wife, Myrtle, and their two young children.

Both originally from Missouri, the Walkers had married in 1908 and were looking to create a good life for their family.

Max I. was hired as temporary help at the Schmoller and Mueller Piano Co. at 15th and Dodge Streets, but he soon was asked to stay on full time.

While piano repair was his primary work, he began making gas lamps on the side and selling butter and eggs around the city via horse and buggy. The butter-and-egg routes took him into elite areas, including the Gold Coast and Blackstone neighborhoods.

“He had an entry into every kitchen in town,” said grandson Robert Walker Jr. Max I. was known as a good salesman with a gift for conversation. Through the butter-and-egg business, he made key business contacts.

While repairing pianos and operating his side businesses, Max I. and his wife consistently put away money. His business success and friendly personality made him an easy target when others needed money. His axiom, “Never loan anybody money you can’t afford to lose.”

One such loan — to a man who ran a small tailoring and dry cleaning shop in north Omaha — nearly cost him. When the owner began struggling to make his loan payments, Max I. decided to learn the business from the inside for just $20 a week.

Max I. quickly recognized an opportunity. There was a need on Omaha’s north side for a quality dry cleaner that charged reasonable prices. After a few months, Max I. struck a deal with his debtor, and on St. Patrick’s Day 1917, the cleaners opened under the name of its new owner, Max I. Walker.

A few weeks later, the United States declared war on Germany, and World War I became the first of many historic events and cultural shifts to create business challenges for the growing company.

First, though, there was that one little shop in Omaha now in the hands of a young couple from Missouri.

Where it all began: Max I. Walker’s original home office at 2410 Ames Ave. Today, the dry cleaning firm has 23 locations in the greater Omaha area.

Ambition, integrity more than a lucky mix Max I. Walker was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1884. He was known as an honest businessman — friendly and patient, even when listening to a customer complaint. He could add figures in his head faster than most people, even years later when others relied on calculators.

His family described him as committed to his values of traditional business with integrity. Grandson Robert Walker Jr., speaking about Max I. in his later years, called him a “salty old bird.”

The former Bertha Myrtle Staples preferred to go by Myrtle. Born in 1881, she grew up on a farm outside Lathrop, Missouri, a small railroad community that later became home to a large pack mule production farm and branded itself the “Mule Capital of the World.”

Myrtle’s family moved to the farm after her father, Alexander, briefly ran a hardware store.

Myrtle, a mother of two, joined her husband in the dry cleaning business, working as a seamstress. She shared her husband’s business savvy; in fact, many family members suspected that hers was the more capable mind for business.

Max I. and Myrtle’s two children, Robert and Virginia, were born six years apart.

The family lived comfortably in a home purchased in 1922 at 2748 Redick Ave. in Omaha’s Minne Lusa neighborhood. They

stayed there until 1956.

Almost immediately after taking over the shop at 24th and Ames, Max I. began keeping a list of his repeat business. He called this his Customer’s Day Book, and in it he listed the names and addresses of his customers, big and small. The book remained in the business for decades, and so would many of those names.

Max I. put great effort into staying ahead of his competition. He worked long hours, drove his own truck in the early days and handled dozens of other chores himself. Eventually, Max I. hired a truck driver, and by autumn of 1917 his staff had increased to six.

In those days, press shops like Max I. Walker sent clothing to a wholesale cleaner. In Max I.’s case, he sent his cleaning every day to a shop in Atlantic, Iowa, 60 miles from Omaha, via the Burlington Railroad.

Older, more established cleaners began noticing the expansion of Max I.’s dry cleaning routes. Sensing new competition, they issued a demand to the wholesaler in Atlantic and others like it: “Don’t take that man’s cleaning, or we’ll pull ours.”

Max I. reacted by buying his own cleaning machine and expanding his business.

That meant he could rely on his own staff to handle every phase of the operation.

His strategy and investment paid off,

and the company grew.

By 1924, the company was advertising that it would clean and press a men’s twoor three-piece suit for $1.50. A newspaper advertisement, which promised “garments cleaned like the touch of a fairy,” noted that for 2½ years, the Walkers had priced their suit cleaning “considerably higher than any other cleaner in the city.”

Did their price structure yield steady business? Apparently, yes. The ad continued, “Yet, we succeeded in not only increasing our volume of business but we increased the number of men’s suits cleaned each year.”

The Walkers were discovering other revenue sources, too. In 1927, the business advertised window-shade cleaning for 25 cents, and rug and carpet cleaning for $3.76.

If it could be cleaned, Max I. vowed, his firm could handle the work, an attitude that company leaders embrace a century later.

Over the years, Max I. gradually passed management of the company to his son and grandson. Still, he continued to report to the office into his 90s, climbing the long stairs to the company offices above the plant in Dundee. He joked that his son and grandson moved to a building with an unusually long staircase to force him into full retirement.

Max I. died of a heart attack May 10,

1982, at age 97 in his residence at Skyline Manor in Omaha. Myrtle, his partner in business and life, had died just two years earlier, on April 4, 1980, at age 98.

Late in his career, Max I. talked about the city that was home to him, his family and their company. “Omaha has been good to us,” he said. “And in turn we have tried to be good citizens, good neighbors, good employers and to fully appreciate our patrons who, after all, determine our success.”

ulations Congrat r On You

100th y! sar r e v i n n A

Since 1975

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INNOVATION ON THE JOB

Max I. Walker escapes Depression-era grip C

onsumer confidence evaporated Oct. 29, 1929, when America’s stock market collapsed. What lay ahead were the toughest of times: The Great Depression. At first, folks in Omaha thought the whole situation would soon pass. The city and state felt the effects quickly enough, though. Agriculture was the first to suffer.

Unemployment jumped, new development lagged, and bank deposits dropped substantially. Some white-collar professionals took substantial pay cuts.

In some parts of the city, a black market economy sprouted. There, if you were lucky, you could buy tires for your car or sugar to bake a cake — at a tremendous markup. This sort of economy persisted in Omaha into World War II, when rationed goods made citizens just as desperate for everyday necessities.

How did all of this affect a young dry cleaning business? Not that much, according to Max I. Walker. “He used to always say our dry cleaning was a Depression-free business,� Robert Walker Jr. said. “So he hung right in there, although there were some pretty tough times. My dad came into the business in 1934, and he talked about how tough it was.�

Max I. and Myrtle’s son, Robert, was 22 when he joined the business. Driven and hard-working, he began looking for a way to make his mark, hoping to show his worth by growing the business during a rough time.

Robert S. Walker and his wife, Nana. He would become known as the master innovator in the Max I. Walker family business. The father-son team would keep their dry cleaning enterprise afloat during the Great Depression. Catering to the city’s well-dressed bootleggers and gamblers provided a steady income stream.

He found his niche on the other side of the tracks. Of the few people in Omaha actually making money during the Great Depression, many were professional gam-

blers and bootleggers with shirts and suits to clean and press.

Max I. and Myrtle — staunch Methodists — never would have solicited that crowd for business, even during a depression. In her later years, Myrtle even fussed when a doctor recommended a bit of sherry every night for her health. The idea of marketing to gamblers and bootleggers was appalling.

They were potential customers to Max I. and Myrtle’s son, though, and Robert went after their business. He even adjusted his schedule to account for their peculiar hours; he rode the streetcar downtown late at night to collect their payments.

Robert’s style differed from Max I.’s in other ways, as well. Robert read the Wall Street Journal every day, and he was quick to move from one task to the next.

He lacked his father’s patience, but he eventually learned to mimic his father’s steady example, such as when listening to a customer’s concern.

Throughout the Great Depression, the Walkers kept their commitments to creditors and met their payroll.

As the country struggled, dry cleaning was going through its own transformation, and Max I. made sure his business was keeping up. Many of the first solvents were petroleum-based and highly flammable. By the early 1900s, raw white gasoline was the primary dry cleaning solvent used in the United States. After World War I, cleaners

began using less flammable, chlorinated solvents. The dry cleaning industry then introduced trichloroethylene (TCE) briefly before finding another reliable — and nonflammable — cleaning agent to replace it: perchloroethylene, or “perc� for short.

It was stable and nonflammable, which allowed cleaners to locate facilities close to residential areas.

In 1935, Max I. Walker began advertising germ-free cleaning. “Next to cats, clothes are the best-known germ carriers,� said one newspaper advertisement. “Every garment you wear can now be cleaned and rendered germ-free, fresh and of course odorless.�

The best part of the germ-free guarantee for consumers, other than peace of mind, was the fact that it was included at no extra charge.

The war effort of the 1940s accelerated the country’s recovery. In those days, the Walkers offered to wash and steam both sides of large rugs for $2 apiece, promising to “revive the newness and beauty of your rugs, brighten the colors, raise the nap and restore the sheen.�

In time, Robert would earn a reputation for innovation in the dry cleaning industry.

In 1939, both Walkers received noteworthy appointments to the Nebraska Association of Cleaners and Dryers. As America slowly climbed out of the Great Depression, the father-and-son duo kept their family business moving ahead.

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POST-WWII, FATHER AND SON BUILD A BUSINESS

Walk-in shops, same-day service proved to be the future O n Dec. 7, 1941, life in the United States changed forever.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor spurred America’s transformation into a military and industrial superpower.

The effect on the country was rapid and far-reaching. Half of Omaha’s population of 20- to 49-year-old men soon left to serve the war effort. Industries in the region transformed into manufacturers of military materials. In Bellevue the Martin Bomber Plant produced 1,585 B-29s, including two that ended the war with atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the men left for war, women found more and greater roles for themselves in the workplace. It was a cultural change that didn’t end with the war. The impact was felt everywhere, including in Max I. Walker’s plants, where women began to work their way into management.

During the hardships and rationing of the war years, people valued what they had — including their clothing. “New clothing was not readily available, so people cleaned and maintained what they already had,” said Robert Walker Jr. The company also cared for countless uniforms soiled while constructing the machines of war.

But there were challenges for the business, too. It was hard to hold on to employees. Besides the shortage already caused by men heading off to the European and Pacific theaters, the sprawling Martin Bomber

Four generations of Walkers: Max I., right; Robert Sr., left, Robert Jr., center, and Rob, who now is president of the Max I. Walker dry cleaning enterprise that marks 100 years this month.

Plant was paying higher wages. Robert Sr. developed a bonus system that rewarded Walker employees for overtime hours and increased production.

By the end of the war, nearly 100 workers were handling nine retail routes. Max I. Walker emerged from the war with money

to invest. And Robert Walker Sr. was increasingly taking the helm, ready to meet the challenge of serving a growing post-war city.

Robert Walker Sr. recognized that as cities expanded, the business model of trucks driving long neighborhood routes, then returning to a plant in the city’s core was inefficient and costly.

“The future was satellite locations, which are called ‘package plants’ today,” said his son, Robert Jr. The company’s first satellite opened in 1949 at 22nd Street and St. Mary’s Avenue.

It was the beginning of the Max I. Walker strategy familiar today — a citywide network of walk-in shops where all of the cleaning is performed.

In a 33-year history of the company written in 1950 by the late Richard “Dick” Holland — then an ad man and later an Omaha philantropist — the company was described as holding “the number one place in the cleaning industry in Omaha.”

In an interview with Holland, Max I. gave his son much of the credit, calling Robert Sr. “one of the best informed authorities about the business in this part of the country.”

That year, the company began to offer same-day service. By 1958, the company was operating 15 locations.

Around the same time, Robert Walker Jr. became the manager at the package plant at 46th and Leavenworth Streets. This

was the younger Walker’s first major step toward leading the company. He later was responsible for the growth of the company’s uniform division. This seemed fitting for the former military academy student. Perhaps it simply took a man in uniform to spot the potential of the uniform business.

Robert Walker Sr. worked with Holland to make sure the public understood the satellite strategy. They regularly bought large advertisements in the Omaha World-Herald.

One early ad read: “How far do your clothes travel to be cleaned and pressed? Well, if an ordinary cleaner does them, it might be miles — from a store, to a big plant, and back to the store again.” But in a Walker neighborhood plant, “it’s only a few steps from counter to cleaning. So you can have your clothes expertly cleaned in just an hour.”

Max I. Walker offered an “Absolute Guarantee.” If a customer wasn’t satisfied, the cost of cleaning would be refunded.

The customer could even take the item to another cleaner and, if the customer felt that competitor did a better job, Max I. Walker would pay that cleaning bill, too.

Customers also could win prizes such as a trip to Mexico.

By 1959, the Walkers were considering closing the central plant. The decision was accelerated that year by a unionizing effort by some route drivers and plant workers.

While some staffers thought of Robert See Prosperity: Page 6

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The nationwide effort to win World War II led to numerous domestic work opportunities for women at Max I. Walker.

Prosperity: Robert Sr. takes helm; satellite locations canvas the city

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Continued from Page 5 Sr. as “such a sweet man,” as secretary Barbara Sargent called him, he showed another side to union organizers. He was rough, intimidating and unyielding, by the family’s accounts.

Robert Sr. was focused on full-steamahead growth, a plan that sometimes concerned his father. Max I. Walker had outperformed his competitors by offering the highest-quality service and attention to detail. Max I. had concerns that rapid expansion might compromise the core business and foundational philosophy.

“I think that Max I. would have been happy staying a smaller cleaner,” said Roy Lovely, a longtime key manager. Max I. “always thrived on quality. We sewed every button and we sewed every little seam and cleaned out the cuffs on the pants.”

He recalled a conversation between Max I. and his son about the company’s future. “I remember Max I. saying, ‘Well, you’ve got to make up your mind. You’ve either got to be the biggest or the best.’ And I remember R.S. saying, ‘I want to be the best biggest.’ ” They came to an agreement. Max I. was fine with the package plant expansion and with growing new businesses as long as it was done with the same integrity with which the core business had been built.

“Fortunately, the stuff that we did turned out pretty good,” said Robert Jr., who had joined the company’s management by the 1960s. “We never lost any money.”

In 1968, the company installed its first drive-through at the Council Bluffs store on West Broadway. The Walkers also opened four laundromats.

In 1971, Robert Jr. established the full-service Walker Drapery Center at 22nd Street and St. Mary’s Avenue. Walker employees would remove drapes, take them for cleaning and then rehang them.

Next came a drapery sales center.

Max I. and his son were an interesting team of similarities and contrasts, according to family and employees. They

shared a penchant for dressing as well as their best-dressed customers. Both wore custom-fitted suits, shirts, ties and dress pants.

They displayed similar entrepreneurial drives and high standards. Both were tough when challenged.

Max I., with his slight frame and easy manner, was considered the gentler spirit of the two. He was famously frugal, even returning the paper bags and hangers from his personal dry cleaning so that they could be reused.

Robert Sr. also had a soft side, but he could be a demanding boss, particularly with men and anyone who challenged him.

Robert Sr., himself, joked about his imposing look. “He had eyebrows that would stick out like (longtime national union leader) John L. Lewis. I don’t know where he got those eyebrows,” Lovely said. “He said he didn’t know, either.”

Robert Sr., who died in 2003, was known for his unannounced plant inspections. If he spied a problem, a potentially heated discussion with the plant manager would follow. “He always took you out to his car,” Lovely recalled.

He once told Robert Sr. that the visits took too much of a toll on his plant staff, leaving employees shaken for hours after it was over. Robert Sr. didn’t believe it, saying he had never scared anyone.

“But he did scare people,” Lovely said.

Grandson Rob Walker, now company president, agreed. “Between the eyebrows, his voice, his large face … In his era, they were tough business guys. That’s what they did.”

Robert Walker Sr. found himself facing a changing world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There was cultural change, of course, but something much more frightening was beginning to attack the dry cleaning industry.

The enemy’s name? Polyester.

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NEW REVENUE STREAMS

Polyester: A new wrinkle B

lame it on the leisure suit.

Dry cleaning businesses faced numerous challenges from changes in technology and shifting fashion trends following World War II. Polyester, however, didn’t seem like much of a threat when U.S. production of the synthetic fiber began in 1953.

Considered impossibly uncomfortable for clothing, it wasn’t as big a concern for dry cleaners as much as the electric dryers that were replacing clotheslines or the growing popularity of “wash and wear” cotton-acrylic blends.

“In the early ’70s, polyester really put the hex on the dry cleaning industry,” Robert Walker Jr. said. “It hit us hard.”

The company’s dry cleaning business declined 24 percent, but the diversification that the Walkers had begun in the ’60s and early ’70s helped the company weather the changes while many other dry cleaners suffered.

In 1974, the Walkers started Max I. Walker’s uniform-rental business, a division that remains important. Robert Jr. credits the uniform rental operation with allowing the company to continue adding new generations of Walkers to the family business.

“There wouldn’t be much room for anyone else at all if we were just a retail dry cleaner,” he said. Now, Chris and Jordan Walker, his grandsons, are the fifth generation in the family business. “I feel pretty good about that.”

The move into uniform rental also allowed the company to ride the polyester wave instead of drown in it.

Polyester and polyester-blend uniforms could be finished with steam, heat and air in a steam cabinet, allowing for a level of automation that greatly increased the number of shirts the company could process each day.

Robert Jr., like his father and grandfather, was active in Varsity International, a national dry-cleaners organization. Discussions at annual conventions during the late 1960s and early 1970s focused on potential new markets. Some members had started a company called Apparel Master. The company “basically taught dry cleaners who wanted to get into the uniform rental business how to do it,” Robert Jr. said. “I started with that, and I pretty much devoted most of my time to do that end of the business until the early ’80s.”

In short order, the company was providing and cleaning the pants and monogrammed work shirts for numerous companies in the greater Omaha area.

In time, Max I. Walker had contracts with most of the area’s auto dealerships.

Food service professionals, heating and air technicians, plumbers, electricians — anyone who needed to look professional doing sometimes dirty work — were potential customers.

At the same time, the Walkers entered the tuxedo-rental business. Several family members and longtime employees de-

scribed it as one of the most enjoyable ventures the company had ever undertaken. The business expanded to five stores by the 1980s.

Tuxedo rental, however, was a lower-volume business that required a large inventory of tuxedos. For the first time, the company was at the mercy of fashion.

“You could spend $200,000 just updating every year,” Robert Jr. said. “It had become very cash-intensive.”

The tuxedo-rental venture ended in the late 1980s.

As the uniform-rental business and the number of dry cleaning plants grew, the company began to advertise through direct mail campaigns and to offer coupons. The Walkers blanketed whole ZIP codes, often targeting areas where competitors were opening stores. In time, Rob said, the mail campaigns became more targeted to the customer.

Dry cleaning toward the end of the century became something of a luxury item. It was a service designed to save time, with same-day turnaround for full-service cleaning of typically finer garments.

“We’re selling people back their time,”

Rob said.

Another cultural change that hit dry cleaners was the slow decline of dress codes in the American workplace, punctuated by the advent of “casual Fridays.”

When did company managers know the dress code was gone and not coming back?

“When Union Pacific went casual,” Robert Jr. said.

The company still was growing by outlasting or buying the competition, adding plants throughout the region and adding new accounts in the uniform rental business. By the time Max I. Walker bought out its last large competitor, Martinizing Dry Cleaning, there were 47 Max I. Walker plants in the region.

Consolidation became the company buzzword as it worked to remain viable into the 21st century.

From a 3rd generation business to a 5th generation business…

Happy 100th anniversary!

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THE NEXT 100 YEARS

A constant: Respect for the customer F

ully-automated machinery. A cutting-edge computer system. Email blasts. RFID tags.

Max I. Walker Inc. has embraced technological innovations that have helped the company remain competitive, especially as it swallowed up two large competitors and worked to consolidate its operations.

The transformation to the digital age also was part of a cultural shift as the torch was passed from Max I. to Robert Sr. to Robert Jr., and now to the fourth and fifth generations.

Over the years, some competitors closed their doors, while Stepanek and Martinizing were acquired by Max I. Walker Inc. The latter move added more than two dozen locations but also brought a huge increase in money being spent on leases, salaries, benefits and other expenses.

For a time, the company operated nearly 50 locations under three names.

Outdated computer systems added to the challenge.

“We inherited a dinosaur,” said Robert Jr.’s daughter, Lisa Walker-Sekundiak, vice president of the company. The software company provided little to no tech support, leaving numerous locations struggling to handle orders.

The Walkers and their controller soon identified an industry leader called SPOT, a point-of-sale software still used today.

SPOT allows plant managers and employees to track plant production, sales, customer loyalty, front-counter operations and even security.

In the early 2000s, the company added credit card processing, which now makes up more than 80 percent of its transactions. Other changes included massive washer-extractors that removed time-intensive steps, as well as sophisticated inventory-management systems that transformed how the company handled large jobs.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Max I. Walker was the largest it would ever be.

Robert Jr.’s son, Rob, thought the company

Running Max I. Walker today: Robert Jr., center; son Rob, seated at left; daughter Lisa; and Rob’s sons, Chris, left, and Jordan. was too big as he became president in the ’90s. “My dad was brought up in that philosophy that you get every piece in the market and clean it. And I just was not,” he said. “It was just trucks going all over the place, and the profit was marginal.”

Continuing to operate under three names was confusing.

Rob Walker, who is credited with changing company dynamics and bringing new technology to the workplace, paid off the Martinizing franchise fees two years early and made a deal barring new Martinizing franchises in the area. Tough decisions for

Rob followed about stores and employees — some not to his father’s liking at the time, but he later said they were needed.

While Rob seemed destined for the family business from his early days, his sister graduated from college, earned a commercial insurance license and worked in radio marketing before joining the family business in 1996. Max I. Walker Inc. had just purchased Martinizing and was closing some locations and absorbing others.

“That was a huge, huge couple of years of learning,” Lisa recalled. “It was a big, monumental turn. Piece counts were declining, the labor market was tricky to work with, we were spread out all over town.” Over time, the company dropped to 23 locations under the Walker name.

Meanwhile, the uniform rental business continued to grow. North to Sioux City,

south to Hamburg, east to Des Moines and west to Hastings, the company now has 1,200 contracted accounts. The business also sells and cleans entrance mats and offers uniform embroidery services.

A decade ago, Lisa established the Ultra Chic Boutique, Max I. Walker’s most ambitious and successful charitable pursuit. “We had always been philanthropically focused,” Lisa said of the event that finds new homes for gently used gowns and prom dresses in a one-day shopping event that, since 2008, has raised more than $145,000 for the Open Door Mission’s Lydia House, an Omaha shelter that serves women and families in crisis.

As the company marks its 100th anniversary, the next generation is making its mark. Rob’s sons, Chris and Jordan, already have shown leadership in the company related to advocating for sophisticated technologies.

An example is the Max Traxx system, in which every piece of rental uniform has a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag.

The tag is scanned when the garment is brought to the facility, and when it leaves.

This helps customers and Max I. Walker employees know where each garment is in the system, and how many times each garment has been cleaned.

“We want to lead the industry in technology,” Rob said. “We want to create a company that any young person would want to be a part of and have them understand that we’re a progressive company that is looking to the future.”

Regardless of technology, though, the Walkers said the integrity of Max I. still holds true. It’s about respect for the customer. And it’s about getting the basics right — every time.

“We’re going above and beyond to try to do what’s right,” said Chris Walker. “My dad always says, ‘Be the white hat guy’ and err on the side of ‘the customer is right.’ It’s the general philosophy here. It always has been.”

“It’s not just about us,” Max I.’s greatgranddaughter Lisa Walker-Sekundiak said of the business’ legacy. “Decades of people who don’t have our last name are part of our success.”

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