Hanger Business Wants to Reflect Japanese Craftsmanship

Since 1946, when the Nakata household established its manufacturing facility specializing in clothes hangers, the handmade picket product has not developed a lot. However its followers wouldn’t need Nakata Hanger’s product to vary.

“The form of the hanger is extraordinarily vital,” mentioned Mark Cho, co-founder of the Armoury, a males’s put on retailer in Hong Kong and New York that has used Nakata’s hangers for 10 years and now sells them. “The thickness of the shoulders and the curvature of the again of the hanger assist immensely with preserving the form and situation of the garment.

“A hanger that’s too skinny or too insubstantial will trigger the garment to stretch out in disagreeable methods which can be troublesome to reverse. Moreover, a hanger made from strong wooden with a hook that’s properly hooked up will final for a few years of use.” (Mr. Cho toured the Nakata manufacturing facility final yr.)

After I entered the Nakata Hanger showroom in Tokyo just lately, I casually positioned my leather-based jacket on the again of a chair, however Shuhei Nakata, president of its dad or mum firm, Nakata Kogei, instantly handed me a shiny cherry-red hanger. I believed: “How can I ever return to utilizing common hangers?”

The enterprise started when Mr. Nakata’s paternal grandfather returned from World Struggle II and met a craftsman who made hangers. Demand continued and by the Eighties, the corporate was supplying trend manufacturers comparable to Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake. “There was no web on the time, so it was vital for every retailer to decide on the best way to show their merchandise fantastically,” Mr. Nakata mentioned, “and the hangers had been crucial for every model’s visible idea.”

However by the Nineteen Nineties, Japan’s financial system was struggling. “The previous president, my father, launched the company web site in 1997, and began to promote hangers on-line in 2000,” he mentioned, including that the ability of Nakata’s artisans has given the hangers a particular presence within the world market. (Nakata additionally makes garments brushes, shoe horns, clothes racks, valet stands and kimono hangers, in addition to what the retail trade calls white label items, or merchandise that different manufacturers can label.)

At present, the clothes hangers are created on the manufacturing facility in Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture. It employs 40 artisans, and it takes them just a few days to make one hanger from begin to end.

Solely European beech is used for Nakata Hangers as a result of, Mr. Nakata mentioned, it’s reasonably laborious and might be polished to a easy end.

“We make 1000’s of various hanger varieties,” he mentioned, together with males’s, ladies’s and kids’s sizes.

And hangers might be custom-made, with a emblem or a reputation added by silk-screen printing or laser engraving, a function that makes them fashionable presents. “In Japan, the place visitors obtain a present for attending the marriage, hangers might be personalised with every visitor’s identify,” mentioned Mr. Nakata, referring to the follow known as hikidemono. In addition they have been given at graduations and at company occasions.

The reward idea was Mr. Nakata’s thought, however he was influenced by his grandfather’s firm motto: Fuku wo kakeru, or “Hanging garments is happiness.”

Mr. Nakata, the third technology to move the corporate, turned president in 2017 and has realized certainly one of his father’s goals by promoting its merchandise to the remainder of the world. They’re now shipped internationally from Japan; stocked on the Armoury’s shops; and offered on-line by the London boutique Arterton and on Amazon’s U.S. web site.

Particular person hangers are 2,000 yen to 30,000 yen ($13.40 to $200), and there’s a particular hand-lacquered one depicting Mount Fuji at ¥165,000.

Mr. Nakata mentioned he desires the remainder of the world to find Japanese artistry. “Our aim is to precise stunning craftsmanship and share the probabilities of hangers,” he mentioned. “They’re not simply good for garments, but additionally for good in your emotions.”