Lena, who owns a mid-sized women’s clothing chain, stared at the quote for wooden clothes hanger: $4 each, compared to $1 for plastic. “I thought, ‘That’s 4x more—how can this be worth it?’” she said. But after a fellow retailer showed her their ROI math, she tested 500 wooden clothes hanger in one store. Six…
Thomas, owner of a high-end men’s suit boutique in London, used to hang his £1,500 Italian wool suits on thin plastic hangers. “A regular client—who buys 6 suits a year—pulled me aside and said, ‘Tom, these suits deserve better than flimsy plastic,’” he recalled. The client pointed out how the plastic shoulders had stretched the…
Zoe, who owns a luxury lingerie brand, ordered 5,000 custom wooden hangers last year. She wanted her logo engraved on the shoulder, but when the shipment arrived, the engraving was smudged—like the machine had dragged through the wood. “The supplier said ‘that’s how it looks,’ but they were unusable,” she said. “I lost $7,500 in…
Mia, who owns a mid-sized women’s clothing boutique, used to order $1 cheap wooden hangers by the thousand. “They seemed like a steal,” she said. But after 6 months, she noticed a problem: half the hangers had cracked, and she was reordering every month. Worse, customers started returning dresses with shoulder dents—caused by the flimsy…
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