Professional Fit Clothing Focuses on Dignity for People with Special Needs

When you first hear about Professional Fit Clothing, it makes you smile. An obvious need for people with special needs to have fashionable clothing that fits, it also restores dignity to many people who have sometimes been forgotten by society.

Kurt Rieback and Tom Pirruccello founded Professional Fit Clothing in 1988 with the intent to help people with disabilities.

"Tom and I went to junior high and high school together. After college, I was in the clothing business and Tom was working at one of the residential care facilities for the developmentally disabled. He saw me on the freeway and flagged me down. It was before the time of cell phones. He wrote on a piece of paper the words, 'Call me. I have an idea.' I called him and he told me his idea for Professional Fit," co-founder Kurt Rieback remembers. "He knew nothing about fashion and I knew nothing about that field. We met that night at his parents' house. He prepped me about the business and I set a meeting to pitch our company. I brought a briefcase with a calculator, pens, rulers and Post-its. The briefcase had nothing in it. But, I made the pitch and the administrator gave us an $8,800 order on the spot. I had my job and Tom had his job. We went downtown with the measurements of the people we were shopping for. We filled the order and it snowballed from there."

Professional Fit Clothing personally fits people in California with adaptive clothing and fashions for people in State Developmental Centers, Veterans Homes and Hospitals, Intensive Care Facilities, Retirement Homes and Group Homes. Meanwhile, the online portion of the business has grown reaching customers coast-to-coast. "Through all the years of fittings, we found the best products that people would constantly order and reorder, so that's what we put in our catalogue. We have a niche for the working class person with a disability. And, for the parent who didn't want their child to go into a facility, they still want the same products."

The company's bottom line goal is to help people and restore dignity.

"Sometimes people don't know what they need. When they find out what we have, they're so happy and grateful that we helped them with a problem you don't hear about very often. For instance, we have clothing for behavior solutions. There are kids with behavior issues or adults with Alzheimers, where they don't know where they are and they take their clothes off wherever they are. Everything is about dignity for us. Instead of just making a mechanics jumpsuit, we think dignity first and we'll take a pant and a shirt and we'll sew it together at the waist. When they try to pull their shirt and pants off together, they can't. Instead, it snaps down the back, that's how you enter it. But, it looks like a shirt tucked into a pant. It doesn't look institutionalized," Rieback notes. "We get positive feedback from parents on the grandparents or kids of parents. If parents have kids with autism and they pull on their pajamas at night when they have to go to the bathroom, it can become a mess. When we create a pajama and they can sleep through the night and not have a disaster, parents are crying because they're so relieved. Parents are grateful for clothing that fits the need because they've gone through so much to keep the child from going into a home and their life gets compromised. If you can come up with products that can help them, it's amazing. If they can keep their dignity, it helps them in the long run. We also have people who tear their clothes and we come up with tough clothing that wears. It helps families."

Rieback has many wonderful stories of listening to individual needs. "I have favorite residents that I go and visit. I have this one guy in Porterville in a developmental center. He's a huge Dallas Cowboy fan and his way of communicating is to blink, once if he likes something, twice if he doesn't like something. That's his communication and he makes noises if he really likes something, but mostly it's all with a blink. He expresses himself as best he can. When I go see him, he lights up. He can be catatonic in a room and then he is elated to see you. A lot of them can totally understand, they just can't communicate back to you. I've gotten him Dallas Cowboy clothing, or clothes in gray and navy. I'll ask him, 'Do you need elastic waist pants?' And he'll blink yes. I'll ask, 'Do you need a jacket, is there anything else?' I'll go down the list and he lets me know what he needs. I've run into many different residents where I have little stories like that."

One of the best selling products that Professional Fit Clothing offers is a line of bibs.

"It goes with dignity again, because bibs are so important. We make special clothing protector bibs that look like regular clothing, but function like a bib. It's huge because a lot of times they want to take their kid or uncle or grandparent out for a bite to eat. They don't want to be wearing a big bib or towel around their neck. So, we came out with an entire line of different clothing protectors that look like T-shirts, button down shirts, vests, bandanas, and all sorts of apron bibs. We're currently working on one for women that looks like a dress bib. We're constantly coming up with new things that, behind the scenes, function like a bib. It is about self-esteem. If there wasn't a product like that, they'd have to go with a towel wrapped around them and they're already self-conscious about that. I know because I have a son with autism. It's just about having some normal moments sometimes. It's just nice to have a seamless process of having a dinner."

Clearly, it takes understanding people to do this work effectively. "We run it like a business, but when people call and have questions, we still take 75% of the calls. We listen to stories about war veterans, kids with disabilities, mom and dad, and the elderly. It's a huge population and everyone has a story," Rieback explains. "We listen and then we come up with something that will help them. Once we help them, they're a customer for life. The search is for dignity. A lot of times they don't come out and say it, but it's what we do and everything we make is with dignity in mind. It's rewarding work. Being able to know that you're not just selling a barcode of clothing, you're selling a solution. Every day there's something new and someone new that calls you, saying you really helped. We receive notes, cards and letters saying, 'you don't know how much you helped.' We receive them from all over. Our UPS log includes the east coast to west coast and everywhere in between. We even serve the smallest routes in middle America."

"We do well on the Internet because people go into department stores and it's not set up for people in a wheelchair. They have rounders of clothing. The department store's goal is to get as much clothing on the floor as possible, but they don't have the person in a wheelchair in mind. So if you've ever gone through a department store, you're rubbing in between clothing and things are falling off the rack. Now, imagine a person with a wheelchair trying to get through there. You think of the dressing room, it's just not set up for a person in a wheelchair. They go and look online because of that. We have button down shirts with Velcro online. It's more of a dress shirt, there are so many prints and they're always changing. People shopping online want exactly what they're looking for. They want to know that it's green and has palm trees, if that's what they want."

With a passion for his work, Rieback has truly found his niche.

"We've been doing it for 21 years. I've had opportunities to do other things, but nothing else is nearly as rewarding." Rieback added, "My hope for Professional Fit is to keep reaching, keep coming up with ideas to help people, keep reaching into homes and facilities and let them know that help is on the way. We'll do what we can to make their lives a little easier."

For more information visit www.professionalfit.com or call 1(800)422-2Fit.

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