Choosing Garment Racks and Other Retail Displays

There are so many decisions to make when you are stocking a retail store. This article can be used as a guide to determine which garment racks and store displays will work best for your store. We will consider your merchandise, longevity of the products and the space you have available when you make your final decisions.

Use a manufacturer of store displays that has a proven track record of service and quality. Do not sacrifice quality for gimmicks like free shipping, major store display and garment rack suppliers offer this anyway. Using one supplier for most of your store display needs will make things easier. If you determine that what you ordered was not exactly right for your store, you can return it and exchange it for something else that the supplier offers.

If the supplier is also the manufacturer, then you will get better prices and usually a higher selection of quality products to choose from. You can generally assume that the quality of one item from the manufacturer will match the quality of other clothing racks and store displays that they sell. For example, if you get a beautiful wooden garment rack from your supplier that seems like you could throw it from a building and it would be okay, and then you order a vintage style garment rack from the same company, you should be able to assume that it will not have sharp corner, rickety legs and shotty construction.

Make drawings to determine the most efficient and pleasing configuration of displays for your store. Play around with different types of garment racks to suit your needs. If you want more open space or have a big inventory for your available space, consider using wall displays to maximize the area. Gridwall and slatwall are great for displaying and help you design a lot of display configurations.

Weigh the costs of each design that you like. You do not necessarily want to go with what is cheapest. Weigh the life expectancy of each item and determine if the need to replace it may make it more expensive than the higher quality option. Plus, if you end up with wobbly, badly designed racks, you will have wasted all of that time and money, while making a bad impression on your customers. Not only that, but sharp edges are dangerous and could be a liability for you. They can also snag clothing and make you lose money on inventory. Shotty construction could fall over and injure someone. There are a lot of reasons to choose high quality garment racks.

Quality displays that properly display your merchandise without cluttering your store can establish a favorable brand image for your retail store. Good clothing racks and displays can help you make more money, establish a good customer opinion and protect you from possible liability.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Manager of Only Garment Racks, a leading online resource for garment racks and clothing racks. Only Garment Racks is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its garment rack and clothing rack offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlygarmentracks.com.

Creating a lighting scheme is an important part of designing your retail store. There are a lot of points to consider when you are making this decision, so make sure that you do not neglect to analyze each point before you install.

Fluorescent lights are the cheapest you can get. The fixtures and bulbs are inexpensive to buy, install and maintain. Fluorescent lights are good for lighting up big warehouses and stores where lighting will not be used to showcase items, draw attention to promotions or reduce the risk of theft. If this does not sound like it would suit your store, consider using as much natural light as possible to keep lighting bills down. Halogen and LED lights also use very little energy.

Spotlighting is very effective for drawing attention to neglected areas of a store or showcasing a promotion. Analyze places where you envision promotional tables, racks or showcase walls. Make sure that you install spotlights or hanging lights in these areas so that you can draw attention when needed. You may even put these lights on a dimmer, so that when you do have a big promotion, you can increase the lighting in a particular area. Remember to incorporate a lot of lighting options in your front windows or window display cases. Sometimes you may want it to be darker with just one spotlight. You may want a series of mannequins to be spotlighted, or you may want the whole display lit up like the outdoors.

Use lighting to deter theft. This can be very important, so consider all of these points when determining how to use lighting to reduce shoplifting in your store. Studies have shown over and over again how comfortable people are when they shoplift in a darker area. Poorly lit corners are where a thief will go to steal from your store. Eliminate them by using spotlights and reflective materials in this area.

Sometimes all you need is a small lamp to illuminate an area. Corners that are hidden from the view of your cashier should have very harsh lighting and mirrors. Bright lights and mirrors make people a lot more nervous about shoplifting than they would normally be. Even stores with adequate lighting, cameras and mirrors are at risk if their dressing rooms are not properly lit. Spotlights in particular, no matter how small, are shown to give people the impression that they are being watched.

The next tip in lighting design is to maximize the lighting impact by using a lot of reflective materials in your store. Strategically place mirrors and chrome clothing racks where lights can bounce off of them and bring more light to darker areas. These strategies can almost double the amount of light in a store without running up the power bill. Reflective surfaces can be used on your dressing room doors, counter tops and walls as well.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Manager of Only Garment Racks, a leading online resource for garment racks and clothing racks. Only Garment Racks is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its garment rack and clothing rack offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlygarmentracks.com.

Marketing Impact and Safety of Retail Garment Racks

Your retail store garment racks help you to display your inventory. Decisions that you make concerning your garment racks and other store displays can be important when it comes to making a good impression, protecting clothing inventory and protecting yourself from liability.

Some retail stores choose the cheapest garment racks they can find because they do not stop to think about how the quality of the rack will affect them. The garment rack needs to reflect the quality of your retail store, and here is why. People use their impressions of your equipment, lighting, cleanliness and other factors to assess the quality of the products that you offer. If the garment rack is unstable, not level, squeaky or looks like it could fall apart at any second, it will quickly become the focus and could become the reason that the customer thinks your store is of low quality.

The lower quality garment racks can also pose many dangers and can make you liable for injury. Children especially are hard on clothing racks. They love to play around inside of circular garment racks and often hang or climb on them. If the clothing rack breaks and the clothes fall on a child, they could suffocate. They could also be hurt by falling or by the heavy rack falling on top of them. Some racks have sharp edges that can cut customers as they walk by. They can also snag clothing and cause you to lose money on inventory and inventory replacement. Plus you have the cost of periodically replacing broken racks.

High quality garment racks have very sturdy construction. Swivel garment racks should not squeak, stick, vibrate or squeal. The bars should have a strong enough finish that they do not scratch easily or rust. Scratched up bars are not only an eyesore, but also can make your hangers stick and become hard to move. The hangers could also start to make that metal on metal sound that nearly everyone avoids. High quality chrome finishes slide smoothly and withstand a lot of use. Purchasing high quality garment racks also ensures that you do not have sharp edges exposed, posing a liability.

High quality garment racks are a good investment for a number of reasons. Drawing the eye and making a good impression is the main goal of any display, but ensuring the safety of your customers and improving their shopping experience can pay off in other ways. High quality garment racks will help you to make that good impression and give you the peace of mind that you need when you are the one responsible for making this decision.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Manager of Only Garment Racks, a leading online resource for garment racks and clothing racks. Only Garment Racks is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its garment rack and clothing rack offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlygarmentracks.com.

Clothing Racks for your Retail Store

Your clothing rack and hanger choices could have more of an impact on your retail brand than you may realize. Lighting, store fixtures, logos and signs all have an influence on what your customers think and feel. Customers draw conclusions about your store quality using the impressions that they get as they go through your store.

Store fixtures say a lot about the quality of your products and your store. Things like counter displays and garment racks show how much time, effort and care you took in showcasing your inventory. You may think that clothing rack and store fixture quality has much bearing on your brand image, but it really does, more than you may think.

For example, if someone comes into your store and starts sifting through your inventory, they form an opinion. If the garment racks are shaky and seem to be falling apart, that reflects on you. If your racks are packed tight with clothes where you cannot see what is there, then who is going to bother digging through it? Tangled hangers, broken plastic hangers or shotty metal clips that tear and damage clothes all make you look cheap and like you do not care. Or even worse, it can look like you cannot afford any better, so something must be wrong with your store. Customers will draw conclusions about your quality by assessing the quality of the items surrounding them.

Using nicer hangers and clothing racks keeps your store from looking cluttered. Studies have shown that people who see wooden hangers or interesting displays automatically assume that the store quality is higher. They are willing to spend more money on the merchandise from these stores because they assume that the quality of the clothing is higher as well.

Nice hangers not only make a good impression on your customers, they help protect your inventory, too. Investing in high quality hangers is not as big of an expense as you might think. Hangers made from wood or satin do not snag or stretch delicate fabrics. They stay slightly separated making it easier for customers to find sizes and prices. They make the overall impression of your store a more positive one.

Higher quality store displays, like wood hangers and garment racks, are the backbone of your store image. When a customer is shopping in your store, you are essentially promising them a high quality product. When they look around and see what there is to offer, they are assessing whether or not they can trust that promise. Image is important and quality can help save you a lot of money in the long run. By giving your customers that extra boost in trust, they can feel more confident in paying higher prices for your merchandise.

Consider all of these things when you stock your store with hangers, garment racks and other retail store displays.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Manager of Only Garment Racks, a leading online resource for garment racks and clothing racks. Only Garment Racks is recognized for the excellent quality and value of its garment rack and clothing rack offerings. For more information, please visit http://www.onlygarmentracks.com.

Storage in Mud Rooms

It’s wintertime, which in many parts of the country means it’s the season to wear bulky coats, scarves, hats, gloves and boots, among other items. This much outerwear is great when you are outside in the elements and it keeps you warm, but what about when you get home, or when guests arrive? Then, all of a sudden, the outerwear presents a problem. In the spring, summer or fall, it’s no problem if a guest stops by and tosses their jacket over the back of a chair, but in the winter, where will they put all their cold weather gear? Your coat closet or coat rack could easily become overwhelmed.

If you have the space in your home, setting aside a mud room is a great idea. Mud rooms are best located at an entryway; they are called “mud rooms” for a reason—mud often gets tracked in from outside. Thus, tile or linoleum floors make more sense in a mud room than do wood floors or carpet. If you don’t want to use the area inside your front door as a mudroom, try locating it just inside the back door, the door leading from the garage to the house, or some other entryway. Mud rooms are perfect for storage year-round—you can keep everything from sports and outdoor gear to seasonal clothing in mud rooms. That way, your snowboards aren’t taking up space in your garage and your bathing suits and snorkeling gear aren’t taking up space in your bedroom closet or dresser drawers.

Clothing racks in a mud room are the perfect place for you—and your guests—to stow your bulky winter outerwear. A clothing display rack with a horizontal bar on which to hang clothes—like you would find in a department store—is far better for a mud room than a coat rack. On a typical coat rack, wet outerwear rests on top of each other, causing all the items to either stay or get wet, while clothing racks allow each item enough space to spread out and air dry.

In addition, a mud room is a great place to have your washer and dryer. Many of the items stored in a mud room will need to be washed anyway, such as muddy soccer uniforms. Also, the clothing racks you have in your mud room can be used to hang clothing that is meant to air dry rather than be put into the dryer, or to hang clothing cleaned with one of the home dry-cleaning systems available on the market.


About the author: Jon Bassfarm is an Internet content writer who enjoys researching and writing about many subjects including garment racks, clothing racks, landscaping, and much more.

Increasing Your Storage Options

If you’re lucky, your house is large enough to designate one room, usually a guest bedroom, for all those items that are not used on a daily basis, yet are useful enough (are they really?) to keep them hanging around. How many of us have at least one room or closet in our house designated for overflow? Often this room is in complete disarray due to the copious amount of clothes and other items that seem to find their way there, yet are never put away or organized; a very real, “I’ll get to it later” sort of room. Today is the day to organize that room. Organizing that mess will undoubtedly allow for less wasted time spent searching within its walls and help to liberate the room from being used as only a “junk room”, once everything has found a proper place.

Organization is key. Organization just makes good sense, but eludes the best of us due to the initial investment of time and energy it demands. True enough, four walls and a floor alone do not offer many storage options other than piling. Piling is exactly what got you into this mess, and it’s time to take the bull by the horns. A shelving unit can be very affordable and readily purchased from a big box store or online and assembled using very minimal tools. Having shelves to place objects that make their way into this room or should make their way into this room would be invaluable. Perhaps your storage room will have a double life, a new life as a sort of chore room, with shelving and a desk dedicated to sewing on buttons or repairing zippers. Perhaps a craft room or home office can spring forth as well, once the organizing ball starts rolling. Once everything is off the ground, all sorts of space can open up; could a treadmill fit in the corner? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. What to do with all those clothes? A rolling garment rack, perhaps even a collapsible one would do the trick. Hanging those clothes on a clothes rack will help keep them easily accessible, even providing a spot for extra drying and airing out after washing and drying them. A garment rack could help provide a more organized “holding area” for finished clothes, allowing family members to simply check the rack when looking for a particular item instead of constantly asking you or your spouse where it might be.

With only a few organizational tools like a clothes rack, shelving, and a desk, new storage and maybe more importantly, new usage of your storage room could possibly inspire new hobbies while organizing your home life a little better in the process!

About the author: Jon Bassfarm is an Internet content writer who enjoys researching and writing about many subjects including garment racks, clothing racks, landscaping, and much more.

Minimizing Your Need to Iron

Of all laundry related chores, ironing is definitely the pits. But what’s the alternative? Pick a job where wrinkles are the norm such as ditch digging or day laborer? Send all your clothes out to be laundered for a steep price, but receive the piece of mind that they will be wrinkle-free and ready to wear when you need them? Okay, granted, the picking the career by the clothes you’ll need to wear is extreme, but you would be surprised how many people would rather pay top dollar to have their clothes laundered rather than invest some money and time to allow them to achieve the “laundered” look in their own home, for much less.

A step towards better looking clothes with less effort and less expense is by simply changing up your fabric softener. You don’t use fabric softener in your dryer loads, you say? Well there’s a problem right there. Not only does fabric softener leave your clothes smelling fresher, longer, it also helps the tumble action of your dryer literally tumble out the wrinkles from the wash. Many new brands claim to be wrinkle-free so take them up on that, give them a try! Removing your clothes quickly from the washer and transferring them to the dryer immediately also goes a long way towards wrinkle-free by continuing the laundry process; allowing your wet clothes to sit in the washer helps wrinkles form, become set-in, and therefore difficult to remove. Another trick that I learned from my mom many years ago is to remove clothes from the dryer before they are completely dry. Take each article and give it a good shake and a whack (like popping a teammate with a towel or less violent, unfurling a flag), shocking the wrinkles out with the movement. Then all that remains to do is to hang the clothes on a rod or hanger, touching no other clothes, and left to dry that last bit of the way. Slimmer, space-saving hangers are readily available that allow many clothes to be hung together. Throw out those old wire hangers and buy new slim plastic ones that do a much better job while taking up a lot less space. By folding your non-hanging items while a little damp (not soaking), you will be happy to find them to appear pressed when you remove them from your chest of drawers or closet for wearing. By simply following these easy steps, you will find yourself spending less time ironing your clothes and more time wearing them and impressing your friends and family with your new style!

About the author: Jon Bassfarm is an Internet content writer who enjoys researching and writing about many subjects including clothes hangers, slim hangers, landscaping, and much more.