Teresa Mosey is not afraid to use tools to repair equipment — and in her business, she does those repairs herself more often than not. Mosey, the co-owner with her two sisters of Fabricare Cleaners, runs the daily operations, equipment repair and all.

Mosey and sisters Jonee Dubos and Danielle Lopeman took over the company two years ago after their father retired. Mosey has been working at the business ever since he bought it in 1985. “Dad was in banking, but he looked at a business the family can help run,” she said.

Originally, the dry cleaning operated in a 1,200-square-foot space attached to a Laundromat, and the business quickly expanded to several drop-off locations. In 1995, the current, 8,000-square-foot facility was built in order to consolidate all the operations under one roof.

Fabricare Cleaners (www.fabricaredelivery.com) is unique because it now does not have a storefront. Instead, it uses six vans to pick up and deliver items for customers, who are both individuals and businesses including motels. Drivers cover almost all of Kitsap County (except for a few areas) and into North Mason.

On a busy day, as many as 800 items (and another 500 shirts) are tagged, cleaned, inspected, pressed, inspected again, then invoiced, bagged and pushed to the loading door area. Only the shirt department is automated, with the rest of the work entailing good old-fashioned manual labor.

The business has about 20 employees; all but one are women, and many have worked there for as long as a decade. Mosey said having a family-owned business changes the way she looks at employees. Because she appreciates having a flexible schedule for herself as a mom, she is accommodating to employees who have important events in their lives. “We look at everything as being a big family,” she said.

Fabricare took a major step about three years ago, when it invested $65,000 into each of the two new dry-cleaning machines that use hydrocarbon. Typical drycleaners use percholoroethylene (or PERC), a highly hazardous chemical. By comparison, hydrocarbon is biodegradable. “Hydrocarbon is natural and has no side effects or smells,” Mosey said. The switch was an expensive move for a small company — but Mosey said it was necessary for them to do their part in being environmentally conscious.

Fabricare is a five-star (highest rating) EnviroStars business, and it does other things like recycling all its hangers (including those that cannot be reused and have to be broken down into components to be recycled).

The industry is highly competitive and has very small profit margins, plus the economy is impacting it because dry cleaning is a luxury for many people. So the business competes through its customer service, Mosey said.

“We try to do a really good job and make our customers happy,” she said. “And we pay attention to some of the environmental things we can do along the way.”