Water use is restricted. The housing slump is crippling intertwined industries. The price of gasoline is we’ve-run-out-of-adjectives high.
Food prices are rising. Rice is rationed. Politicians are pointing fingers. (OK, that’s not news).
What’s next, you wonder?
Have you looked in your closet?
Clothes hangers are costing more and are in diminishing supply, and Rome cleaners are asking customers to recycle.
It’s always been good stewardship to recycle or otherwise re-use clothes hangers, and clothing charities can always use empty hangers.
But most people don’t return hangers, or at least they didn’t until signs started appearing on doors and countertops in cleaners around town.
“A lot of people don’t know. They just throw (hangers) away,” said Gita Patel, who with husband Jay owns Quality Cleaners and Star Cleaners.
Kruti Desai of Plaza Cleaners estimates only 15 percent of customers return their hangers.
The sudden shortage is a direct result of an “anti-dumping” tariff imposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce in March on hangers imported from China.
The tariff, according to Phenix Supply Co, a laundry and dry-cleaning supplier, was imposed “in order to allow United States manufacturing to return to an environment that will allow them to compete and return jobs to this country.”
Marie Sledge, co-owner of Rome Cleaners with husband Shayne, shared a letter from one of the business’s suppliers, Morris & Eckels. It states: “We strongly recommend that our customers implement an aggressive hanger recycling program to supplement the shortage of hangers.”
“Hangers last year at this time were $28 a box, where now they are $56,” Marie Sledge said.
There are 500 hangers per box, she said.
“Our business’s profit is very narrow, causing us to go up for the first time in a long time on prices,” Sledge said. “We cannot raise prices (further) to meet these increases in cost due to economic changes.”
She added the cost of dry-cleaned garments’ plastic covers, which are petroleum-based, has risen to $32.50 from $25 per 25-pound roll.
It will take a while for American manufacturers to step up production, Patel said, and there’s no guessing where the price of hangers will land. Meanwhile, “We really can’t afford to go up on prices because this is a service business.”
Meanwhile, customers have taken note and are bringing hangers in, Sledge and Patel say.
Michelle White, an employee with K Cleaners & Alterations, said she used to see about one customer a week returning hangers. Since the business put up a sign, it’s now around 10 customers a day, she said.
The hangers don’t have to be perfect, Desai said. What the cleaners can’t re-use, they give to clothing charities.
