SARAH de HAVENON OF FRENCH PRESSE: Working
There’s a softer side to the infamous trade parade in at least one work van that makes a couple of weekly trips from Montauk to Manhattan and back again.
Behind the wheel you’ll find Sarah de Havenon, a resident of East Hampton and Manhattan and the owner of French Presse, a laundering service and mobile sales business for bed linens. She’s just wrapping up her first year in business.
From her own experience renting houses in the Hamptons, she said she came to think there was not really an efficient way or expert place to take linens to be washed and pressed on the turnover days between visitors. “When the house cleaners come, there’s no time to do all the sheets,” Ms. de Havenon said. “I realized there was a place in the market for this. The original idea was a luxury linen service, but it grew into linen management and then linen sales.”
It began as a part-time enterprise. That didn’t last long. As she doubled — then nearly tripled — her client roster, she hired an employee. She started consulting on bedroom design and linen selection, organizing closets, and training housekeepers on proper care. The back of her van is like a miniature store, an elegantly upholstered display setting where she offers her customers samples and swatches. Now, she finds herself deciding whether to buy a second work van, expand to the Greenwich, Conn., area, and design her own line of products. Next Thursday, she will offer her first-ever bedding sale and workshop on linen care, bed making tricks, and decorating recommendations, to be held from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at Mandala Yoga in Amagansett.
Ms. de Havenon travels about 500 miles per week, stopping throughout the South Fork and west toward New York City to collect her clients’ used bed linens. Her cleaning method uses gentle washing ingredients that she first tested on her own belongings. After the sheets, duvet covers, pillowcases, and even table linens are gently laundered and then pressed — customers can choose between a sharp fold, a fluffier presentation in a wicker basket, or even hung up — she drives in the opposite direction to return them.
“I really enjoy all the aspects of building the business,” Ms. de Havenon said. “I’m definitely an entrepreneur at heart.”
Before launching French Presse, Ms. de Havenon was the owner of a small yoga studio in Manhattan. She gave it up to begin raising her three sons, now 21, 19, and 11. She said she hopes she is a good example to her kids, which in itself is a habit she picked up from her own parents. She is one of six children born to Gaston de Havenon, an immigrant from French Tunisia who worked as a perfumer, and Anna Lou de Havenon, a pianist originally from Portland, Ore.
“Both of them were really hard workers with really high standards,” Ms. de Havenon said. “I sort of inherited a lot of that . . . and I like showing my kids what it means to be hard-working.”
After her kids were in school, Ms. de Havenon worked for a natural foods company and a fashion design company. Throughout those experiences, though, she said she always wanted to develop her “own thing.”
“I wanted to reap the benefits of what I put in,” she said. “If I work at 150 percent, I get the value of that extra 50 percent instead of giving it to an employer.”
Ms. de Havenon said her friends and her husband, Joe Fowler, who works as a builder, have been very supportive. She said her business is profitable, but she still teaches yoga classes on the side, working at Love Yoga in Montauk.
“It keeps me in touch with helping others,” she said. “It keeps my soft side developed, because when you have a business you can get so wrapped up in things.”