Norman’s Formal Wear: A Family Affair For Your Formal Affairs

The warm weather is upon us and the prom and wedding season is set to begin. For 50 years, Tinley Park residents have trusted their dress-up needs to .

It started as a dry cleaning business in Evergreen Park in 1951.

“My grandfather Norman had a delivery truck and he’d come out to these areas – Tinley Park, Orland Park and Homer Glen – because it was still fairly remote out here back then,” Norman’s grandson R.J said. “He’d pick up the clothes and bring them back to his facility and clean them. Then he’d deliver them back to the customers directly.”

As Norman’s children started to get married, he saw a coalition with the two businesses.

“He realized that the tuxedo and dry cleaning business kind of went hand-and-hand,” R.J. said.

Tinley Park High School senior Darell Elem chose Norman’s for tux for based on a classmate’s recommendation.

“One of my friends came here and told me it was a good place to go,” Elem said.

After having the pants to his gray suit tailored, R.J. folded his pink scarf for his side pocket. Elem looked it up and down as R.J. handed it to him.

“I’m going to look good,” Elem said as he nodded with an excited gleam in his eye.

After the dry cleaners branched into formal wear, it continued to grow, opening locations in various communities. Today, there are locations in Tinley Park, Orland Park and Homer Glen. Each location is run by one of Norman’s children: Richard and Al and his grandson R.J. 

With their main location and warehouse in Tinley Park’s historic downtown, the company has an array of styles ready and available at the customer’s request.

“We warehouse all of our tuxedos here,” R.J. said. “It’s convenient. So when a customer picks out a tuxedo style we can actually go in the back room and pull out their size and let them try it on versus looking at it on a mannequin and trying to determine if they like it or not.

“When they try it on it’s not always their first choice that they go with and that’s one of the benefits we have over our competitors,” he said

Norman’s fits children as young as 1 and carry tuxedo coats that go all the way up to a size 70.

“Even though they are rentals, we sometimes custom-fit because not everybody is an off-the-rack kind of person,” R.J. said.

Aside from having a tailor on staff, the family has employed the same seamstress for the past 40 years.

“She’s part of our family” R.J. said. “She was a dressmaker in Greece. There’s nothing she can’t do.”

As much as they have tried to stick with their original methods and traditional values, the family realized that changing with the times is inevitable.

“We started with only four different suit coat styles and that was mainly color,” R.J. said. “We had black, white, gray and brown. Now we carry over 35 different styles of tuxedos in stock and 90 different colors of ties and vests.”

Additionally, they have recently partnered with a company that allows them to custom order.

“We can custom order virtually anything,” R.J. said. “If there’s something a customer wants that’s not in stock. We’ll order it for them.” 

Norman’s does not charge their customers fees that may be charged at other rental companies.

“One of our biggest competitors is a nationwide company and we found it interesting that some customers would ask if we were going to charge them tax on the rental. There is no tax on tuxedos rentals. When you’re based out of this community the rental doesn’t incur tax,” R.J. said.

There are also waiver fees, shipping fees and last minute rental fees that other companies may charge. Not at Norman’s.

“We often get customers come in the day of a function and say, ‘Hey, you know I didn’t plan on being a part of this but they need me.’ We’ll get them the same style that everyone has so it doesn’t look like it was a last minute fix. At no additional charge,” R.J. said. 

Helping out in times such as that and being a part of important functions in customer’s lives is what motivates R.J. and his family.

“Our customers are part of our family,” R.J. said. “I had a mother who came in with her son to pick up his prom suit and she said to me, ‘Do you realize that we brought the tuxedos for our wedding from you?’”

“It gives me chills to realize how long we’ve been doing this,” R.J. said. “I guess we made an impression on her and she wanted to come back.”