Encouraged, he pinned up more. Kleinfield told readers. Within a few days, thanks to, ahem, wire services picking up the story, the exhibit went the print-era equivalent of viral.
Soon the office fax machine was spitting out messages until they flooded onto the floor. Daily foot traffic increased into the hundreds. Therein lies the unusual status of the wire hanger: an inescapable part of modern life to which everyone can relate but no one pays much attention. Upward of 80 percent of US wire hanger consumption comes via dry cleaners uniform rental services comprise much of the rest , which employ wire hangers as a means of garment storage and transport so cost-effective they are included with their services.
No less an authority than the so-called Hanger King himself, industry magnate Bernie Spitz, once proclaimed that he would never sell them. And yet wire hangers pioneered the form. If at least some of these were born independent of one another, it would suggest a fitting inevitability. It is no coincidence that this time of more obviously groundbreaking invention is what also produced the humble hanger.
Not until the Industrial Revolution streamlined the manufacturing and shipping processes did most Americans even own enough garments to warrant considerable storage.
Homes built in that era did not typically include closets; most Americans kept unworn clothes folded in chests or hung on wall-mounted rods. Once people had clothes, they soon had hangers, and once they had hangers they soon had them in excess.
As far back as the s, the Times was advising its readers on using wire hangers to construct bird feeders or a skillet to cook fish over a fire. Other extracurricular uses became more common: replacing or augmenting TV antennae , breaking into cars , rescuing misplaced keys and rings and baseballs from sewer grates.
The premise of these how-tos is familiar: Of course you have wire hangers and of course they are awaiting better use. They are, always, just sort of there. Magnus told his friend that his father, just like his father before him, manufactured and sold wire hangers. His friend was taken aback. In his childhood naivete, he had never considered that they were manufactured or sold at all.
The eldest Milton and his business partner, Roy Brekle, had previously been reselling used bottle caps to soda makers. Not long ago, the Magnuses had more domestic company in the industry. At least two others, Indy Hanger and U. Hanger Co. The George W. Bush administration, which had declined such action in its first term, imposed tariffs on Chinese wire hanger imports.
In , just Yet imports themselves still totaled a sizable 1. In , two Tijuana-based importers received jail time in California for similarly rebranding Chinese-made, US-bound hangers as products of Mexico. Two years ago, a crackdown on one such fraudulent manufacturer in Southeast Asia disrupted the usual supply chain.
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