TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Lumps are for
bubble teaLumps are generally not good things. They ruin gravy, send mothers running for swelling-reducing ice packs and may foretell cancer.
Richard Takaba is sick of them.
While he likely deals with more than his share of lumps supervising remediation of petroleum-contaminated sites for the state Department of Health, he no longer has them along the shoulder seams of his shirts.
Necessity may be the most widely known mother of invention, but annoyance gave birth to Takaba's brainchild -- an extra wide clothes hanger called MrBigXL.
Takaba looked into a patent, "but there are already 400 existing patents and this is just a wider hanger," he said.
"Basically what inspired me was that every single one of my shirts had (lumps) and it annoyed me," he said.
"I started talking to my friends and found that people really did think about it and were annoyed by it."
The problem: Large and extra-large shirts are 20-to-22 inches wide at the shoulders and standard hangers are 15-to-17 inches wide.
"The steep drop-off caused by standard hangers create lumps in the shoulders, giving a messy and unappealing appearance," he said.
To take a stab at infomercial speak, he's tried wetting and ironing them or throwing lumpy-shouldered shirts in the dryer but those annoying lumps just didn't go away.
In his spare time Takaba added extensions to wooden hangers until he arrived at what he figures to be the perfect width -- 22 and a half inches.
The hangers have proved "an answer to that small but significant annoyance that I experienced every day," he said.
He turned over his product specifications to architect friend Tim Oshima at construction company Brett Hill Inc.
"Basically he just needed to convey his design to the manufacturers," Oshima said, and "I grew up in drafting through college."
Takaba sent Oshima's drawings to the bid-winning manufacturer in China, where a mold was fabricated and his first 3,000 units were produced.
He's sold about 600 hangers since launching www.MrBigXL.com in May and logging his first order in June. The hangers are only sold online.
His most common orders are for an introductory offer of 3 hangers for $6 and for 24 hangers at $1.25 each, not including shipping. Twenty five percent of his orders are from women who order for the men in their lives or to keep their own wide-neckline muu muus and other fashions from falling to the closet floor.
Despite all the double-, triple- and other multi-X shirt wearers in Hawaii he does not have any plans to, pardon the term, expand his line. Setting up for the first size cost $4,000, said Takaba.
He's prepared a business plan and is experimenting with search engine placement but considering that he doesn't sell in stores or the swap meet his volume is "pretty good," he said.
"I just need more eyeballs."
Oshima has several prototype hangers. "The only problem is the house I live in. The closets are makeshift closets not built to standard sizes."
He looks forward to moving into a home with normal closets that will enable him to use the extra-wide hangers.
This seems to be another case in which size does indeed matter.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com