Online dry cleaning service, Zipjet, has released a study revealing the cost of dry cleaning a suit in 100 countries around the world. As necessary attire for many, Zipjet wanted to discover how suit-related services themselves contribute to worldwide trade. The study aims to establish not only how the cost of this service varies from nation to nation, but also how much the dry cleaning industry contributes to the economy as a whole. In addition, as an indicator of affordability, the study establishes the number of hours an individual is required to work while earning minimum wage to afford the service.
The study began by hand-picking 100 cities around the world, focusing on capital cities, business centres and financial districts. To source the cost of dry cleaning a suit, Zipjet looked at the average price of cleaning 2 and 3-piece suits in each location, as both a package deal and as separate jacket and trousers. Once this figure was determined, the deviation from the average could be calculated, which reveals how much more or less expensive the service is in comparison to all of the other cities in the study. The final index is ranked highest to lowest, based on the cost of dry cleaning a single suit.
In an effort to give the data some human perspective, the number of hours an individual on minimum wage must work to dry clean one suit was calculated. This data also establishes the overall affordability of the service in each city, and gives an indication of standard of living. Finally, to establish how much capital dry cleaning adds to the economy, the amount that each country spends on dry cleaning suits per year was calculated. This was determined by multiplying the yearly cost of dry cleaning with the total number of professionals who typically wear suits such as bankers, lawyers, insurance brokers, governmental workers and teaching staff, to give an indication of the total national cost.
“For traditionally business-oriented cities, such as Oslo, Helsinki and Zurich, our study shows that citizens are paying between 13-30% more to dry clean their suits than the rest of the world. Although you could consider this a ‘suit tax’, our data also shows that as salaries are higher in these nations, it would only take around 1 – 3 hours of working at minimum wage to afford such a service in these cities.” says Founder and Managing Director of Zipjet, Florian Färber. “We hope therefore that this index might serve as a useful tool for young professionals searching for a lucrative yet affordable new city to call home. Geneva and Copenhagen, for instance, are great examples of how the index acts as a useful indicator of overall affordability, as the data illustrates that despite high dry cleaning costs, the cities also offer higher wages.”
More information: https://www.zipjet.co.uk/2018-global-dry-cleaning-index#USD
