National Clothesline

I very rarely discuss packaging because doing so may suggest that one way is better than another or one way is more likely to be better for your customers than an alternate way.

I believe that there is no best way to package your shirts. There is always a better way. I have seen drycleaners drown their product in paper and plastic, so much so that the product itself — the shirt — is an afterthought. This doesn’t mean that they do a poor job, it just means that they may not be getting any sort of ROI (return on investment) for their expenditure of supplies and labor.

Make no mistake about it, supplies almost always have a labor cost attached to them. For example, stuffing tissue into sleeves may cost more in labor than the tissue itself. That’s fine, as long as you already knew that.

The plastic butterflies that keep collars from drooping add a nice touch, plus about five seconds of labor. I’m not writing to complain about that, rest assured.

When I talk about ROI on packaging, I am just wondering what it does for customer loyalty. Is it a nuisance? Or is it sign-language for “attention to detail.”

I don’t think there is an answer, and if there is, it’s probably arbitrary anyway.

I have seen so many packaging variations that include every product from capes, printed poly, plastic butterflies, cuff clips, cuff links (real ones), tissue-stuffed sleeves, cardboard under the collar and still more that I’ll remember when I’m through writing this column. There is one constant: everybody uses something to hold an order together. Twist-ties and rubber bands are the most common. I have wondered which is best, both from the customer’s standpoint and the cleaner’s. When I’m working at a plant that uses rubber bands, I think about the advantages of twist-ties that are forfeited, and vice versa.

When I was in the planning stages of my wholesale shirt laundry 17 years ago, I wanted to come up with something that held orders together securely, didn’t pull the hangers closely together for fear that the collars would be crushed, was quick to affix and was cost effective.

What follows is a snapshot of several products that are designed to hold multiple hangers together, the pluses and minuses of each (from my point of view), the product that I used as a wholesale shirt launderer and a surprising twist on the most popular (and my least favorite) product.

This clip is easy to attach — a big plus — but is not very effective at keeping shirts from getting smashed together when you have a group of more than four or five shirts, especially when heavy starched is involved.

The first day I used these, my drivers complained of the near punctures that they received while carrying multiple orders of shirts. Although the pin isn’t sharp, it poses an undue danger of piercing a customer’s hand. You can elect to use these internally, using them only from assembly to storage. This is the time when an order is most likely to get separated from its mates.

If your driver or your customer service reps remove the combiner clip before handing an order over to a customer, you may have a great compromise.

Recycling these has obvious environmental advantages, but it also plummets the cost of this otherwise expensive product.

The paper clip-type combiner clip

I liked this product from the first time I saw it. It seems to address the three issues that I have with combiner clips and systematically remedies each one.

First, the “hazard” issue. It’s gone. The paper clip has only rounded ends and can not possibly prick your hand.

Two, if you have a larger order you can “piggy-back” these and still have a professional looking product.

These are cheaper too, although recycling them isn’t an option. You really need to pull them apart, rendering them unusable, to remove them. These attach very quickly. I think that only rubber bands attach faster than these once you get used to them. These tangle in the box that they are packed in, though, which I find very annoying.

This is the kind of fastener that you might see attaching a price tag to an item that has no fabric on it, like a pair of sunglasses. This plastic device is very secure, quick to attach, easy to piggy-back with others to make a secure large bundle of any size and was my choice as a wholesale shirt launderer. It may not be right for you however. I needed something very secure.

These are. I wanted something that would never crush collars together. These couldn’t. And since I was a wholesaler, it often happened that orders of shirts were very large. Orders of ten were not uncommon, so I needed something that could effectively hold large orders too. Grouping these was easy and good-looking.

These have two drawbacks. If you compare their cost to twist-ties and rubber bands the cost difference is simply astronomical. From the customer’s viewpoint, they may be too secure. Taking these apart is best left to scissors or heavily calloused hands.

Rubber bands are nothing to write home about. They serve the purpose well, just without any fanfare.

What else is there to say about them? Everyone knows how to use them, and as long as they don’t snap, they do what they are called upon to do and without breaking the bank. Does that make them the product of choice? Well, I like style and professionalism. Rubber bands aren’t in this league, but that may be fine with you.

Twist-ties have long been my least favorite. But I believe that you are part of the problem if you aren’t part of the solution, so until now I kept mum on the subject. My “twist” on twist-ties (pun intended), is unique but I can’t take credit for it. It’s the brainchild of a client in suburban Chicago.

Twist-ties are cheap and effective, but I hate it when an employee over-tightens them and crushes the garments together. Furthermore, the bread wrapper packaging image simply isn’t what we want in a professional product.

No matter how much I tried to accept them, that standard-fare look stuck out at me like a black eye. But check this out. Use only 11-inch Twist-ties and insert one end in between the hangers in the usual manner until it is about half way in. Now fold the Twistie in half. Fold the resulting double pigtail over your index finger and twist the loop that was just formed. Voila! The order is held together securely, is surprisingly easy to take apart, it is one of the least expensive options, and it is impossible to tie the hangers together too tightly. This method forces you to leave breathing room for the hangers. Best of all, this method completely erases the unsightly “slam-bam, I-also-moonlight-at-the-all-night-diner-across-town” look of twist-ties used in the conventional manner. Is this the best way to keep orders together? You decide.

“If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got.”