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Goodbye to Drab Wire Hangers
April 1, 2007 By: Mark Arzoumanian Paperboard PackagingWhy not make them from recycled board and use them as a marketing tool?
When you get home tonight, take a look inside your closet. Of course it is filled with lot of shirts, blouses, pants, and skirts. Most of them are on wire hangers.
 Hanger Network's EcoHangers get multiple exposures in the home that run as low as 4 cents per impression. Notches in the shoulders can accommodate evening gowns or lingerie. |
Ever wonder why these wire hangers leave indentations in the shoulders of your shirts and blouses? Board hangers can be diecut to eliminate this problem. Not only that, but you could print advertising and even coupons on board hangers. They could go from being merely functional to marketing tools.
Board hangers have been around since the 1920s. So why didn't they become popular? They couldn't compete with wire hangers on price.
Until recently, there was no real incentive to use board hangers. Wire hangers dominated. Board was first thought of for packaging and protecting food and many other consumer goods. But today, a recycled board hanger can be printed in multiple colors, stand out in any closet, and promote a product.
 How Are EcoHangers Distributed? |
Three-and-a-half years ago, board hangers weren't on JD Schulman's entrepreneurial mind. It was Thanksgiving 2003 and he was carrying a plastic garbage bag in his home when a wire hanger inside it tore the plastic. Gravy dripped all over the floor. That's when the computer and Internet industry veteran said to himself, "There has to be a better way to make hangers." The idea of making "new" board hangers was born.
"For years, packaging was the stepchild of the marketing department," says the coo of Hanger Network In-Home Marketing, the New York City-based company he started in November 2004. "We're now changing this. Why can't a packaging guy say to a marketing guy, 'This [board hanger] is cool. Why aren't we doing it?'"
But before he left the Internet world for selling ads on board hangers, Schulman did his homework.
From Wire to Board
Each year, the United States uses about 3.5 billion shirt wire hangers. Schulman estimates that if these wire hangers were converted into board hangers, it would result in the need for 35 million additional tons of recycled boxboard annually. That translates into 673,000 tons on a weekly basis. This hasn't happened yet, he admits, but at a time when everyone is concerned about sustainable products, such a transition isn't as impossible as it might first seem. And what board producer or folding carton converter wouldn't want this additional business?
Schulman explored at least 50 hanger designs before he came up with a winner that he could patent. He worked closely with designers at the Standard Group (SG), an independent carton converter in Queens, N.Y.
These designers understood that this board hanger had to look like a traditional wire hanger and work at dry cleaners. Even though dry cleaners receive the hangers for free, if the hangers don't work for them, it doesn't matter what material they were made from.
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