By LYN BRONIKOWSKI

Rusty Perry now cleans and presses the same kind of pricey suits and dress shirts he used to wear to work every day when he practiced law in Denver.
But he’s not complaining. Perry hopes to clean up in the business world with Revolution Cleaners - the first dry-cleaning company in Colorado to use a nontoxic and environmentally friendly carbon-dioxide system to clean clothing. The green-technology company has stores in Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood and in Boulder and a plant in an industrial section of Northeast Denver. It plans to open two more metro-area stores, as well as stores in Aspen and Steamboat Springs, by year’s end. Founded last year by Perry and his partners, Revolution Cleaners also is in talks with investors in Seattle, Dallas and Baltimore who want to introduce the technology to their states.
“The plan is to go national,” said Perry, noting that Kroenke Sports in Denver’s Pepsi Center recently signed Revolution Cleaners as its official dry cleaner, not only for its administrative staff but for its sports teams - the Denver Nuggets, Mammoth lacrosse team and the Colorado Avalanche.
“We can clean everything from the expensive suits of the Nuggets players to those smelly hockey pads using this technology, because it is gentler on clothing than traditional dry cleaning and doesn’t use heat,” said Perry.
A1996 graduate of the University of Denver College of Law, Perry never dreamed he’d land in the dry-cleaning business. Growing up in New York, he’d sit by his lawyer grandfather’s side, watch him work and talk legal matters. Then, as his grandfather’s eyesight slowly failed, Perry would read the fine print on legal documents to him - an effort that inspired him to enroll in law school, first at New York University and later to finish up his degree at DU.
“He was a huge influence on me,” said Perry. “He was an estate attorney, a pillar in the community who practiced law for 72 years. Even up to a year before he died - when I was in my second year of law school - he was still helping people with their legal matters.”
After passing the Colorado bar, Perry handled landlord-tenant cases and nasty pro-bono divorces, and worried about billing hours as he put in 14-hour days.
“Being a lawyer is a rough lifestyle,” he said. “It’s not as much fun as it looks on TV, but it’s a great background to start a business.”
He abandoned law to start his first business, renovating and reselling duplexes and triplexes, swapping torte for tile and days in court for days on a kitchen remodel. “I’d lay tile, do a lot of the work myself and found it was fun,” said Perry, who before long was eyeing a mixed-use building near his Highlands neighborhood home as his next project. Among neighborhood needs was a dry-cleaner, but Perry and his partners were leery of becoming engaged in a business that could harm the environment.
“We had a lot of homework to do on the technology and the logistics of bringing green dry-cleaning technology to Colorado,” said Perry. “We always joke how non-glamorous it is to be in dry-cleaning, but it is a solid business that’s not going away. We just wanted to bring change to the industry to make it better.”
Everything about Revolution Cleaners is designed to be ecologically sound - from the process that uses a closed cleaning system that prevents CO2 gasses from escaping into the environment to fueling delivery trucks with a byproduct of mustard seed grown by Colorado farmers. Laundry bags and staff T-shirts are made of a natural hemp fiber, while flooring in stores is bamboo.
“We are building a profitable business that is responsible by being completely sus-tainable in all aspects,” said Perry. “We pay our employees a living wage and offer health benefits. It’s the right thing to do and doing the right thing is good for business.”.