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I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- awl130 3y agoneed this in tokyo
- xeromal 3y agoDoes anyone know her cancer situation? It almost bummed me out that she got sick as soon as she became popular.
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agoshe hasn't talked about it as far as I know (it's definitely in none of her YT videos or more obvious social stuff) and in every video she looks extremely healthy and seems reasonably upbeat and i'm going to be really pissed if she is sick again, so, I'm really hoping no news is good news.
- dquarks 3y agop sure it's a noncancerous tumor, but she hasn't discussed it much (if at all)
- xeromal 3y agoMy buddy has a non-cancerous brain tumor but it often plays with his hormones and causes his eye to bulge and lose vision so they can be quite nasty even without cancer. The medicine to keep it from growing also makes you lethargic and asexual. That's why I was curious. It can be rough on a person
- AYoung010 3y agoif i recall correctly, it was operable so they just removed it
- xeromal 3y agoOh great news!
- r2_pilot 3y agoWell, mostly. I seem to recall that she had a recurrence about a year ago or so (pre-edit, 2019 specifically per her wiki page, I'm getting old). But I've been watching her for a while and she seems to still be active and making good videos, so yeah good news I reckon.
- kraig911 3y agoI feel she doesn't want what she went through for her medical woes to not be a big part of what people think about when they think of her. I'm assuming that but it's the impression I get.
- schainks 3y agoIt's long over. She went on a speaking tour after recovering from surgery in 2019 or so.
- nolongerthere 3y agoShe mentioned it briefly in a few of her tesla videos, she did apparently go through chemo but that was 4 years ago and I don't see it in a more recent one so I'm guessing she's in remission?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- russellbeattie 3y agoSadly, the design is most likely going to be copied, mass produced and available on Temu/Amazon/Alibaba within the next several weeks. Kick Starter is basically free R&D for Chinese manufacturers.
- corethree 3y agoThe entire US of A is free R&D for Chinese manufacturers. In fact the entirety of China is free R&D for itself as companies in China copy each other. China is the apex of the open source philosophy taken to the maximum extent.
- jacknews 3y agoo/s is where you share your designs freely, not just rip others off. China copies everything and everyone else, but then still tries to keep it's own secrets.
- corethree 3y ago> o/s is where you share your designs freely, not just rip others off. It's effectively the same thing. It's just connotations. In fact China has a lot of bad connotations associated with everything they do so it's hard to talk about the country in an unbiased way. There's so much pride and patriotism that gets introduced into the equation especially given the fact that it's on track to overtake the US in terms of economic size. On the other hand, open source has too much good connotations associated with the term. If the core philosophy was exploited to the maximum extent you essentially get China.. where the incentive to innovate is much less than the incentive to copy someone else's innovation. >China copies everything and everyone else, but then still tries to keep it's own secrets. Doesn't everybody do this? The US full of closed source and open source code/products? The thing with China is that stopping illegal copying is unlikely to be enforced so the only defense against intellectual property in China is secrecy. In the US both secrecy and law are used for protection and many companies and people exploit both of these tools.
- eru 3y ago
- qiqitori 3y agoThese are the nicest clothes hangers I have in my possession, i.e. they can be used with a lot of different stuff: https://www.topvalu.net/items/detail/4549741790529/ https://www.topvalu.net/items/detail/4549741790529/ Now I wish they had a hinge too. (Hmm, weekend project?)
- llamaInSouth 3y agoI hate these kind of hangers.... my shirts get stuck in the "grooves" when I try to take them off
- stewpy 3y ago[flagged]
- amanzi 3y agoLooks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design. I was also surprised something like this didn't exist already. But my first thought was that it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly, so I hope she gets enough revenue from it to pay for her time.
- repeekad 3y agoHopefully she already started the patent process, otherwise it’s either 1) an expired patent 2) an existing patent 3) she actually invented it but won’t profit at all from it
- Juicyy 3y agoPatenting this for her portfolio maybe, I can design and print a folding plastic hanger in 1 piece in less than 24 hours. A mold not far behind if i reached out to a shop... you raise an interesting point I think gets asked in nearly every YC interview. How do you build your moat or stop any big players from competing with a very similar product. I think she actually misidentified the problem she was trying to solve. In her case, imo, her "secret sauce" would be the space saving clothes rack/furniture AND matching hangers. There is no solution with her hanger in normal clothes racks. so her hanger product actually serves no purpose.
- jtuente 3y agoHer Kickstarter does have tiers with brackets/shelves, so yeah, that's already there too.
- retrochameleon 3y agoShit. You do have a really good point. There's not many examples of hanger bars mounted so close to a wall or in a tiny closet already. Most people who might use this would have to be building or installing one for this custom purpose. I also wondered if it wouldn't make your shirts more wrinkly or have the potential to leave creases. I don't think anyone cares to invest in a space-saving solution like this if it means all their shirts will be wrinkled or creased. Unless space is the primary constraint, like a tiny apartment, tiny house, or custom van build.
- lagt_t 3y agoThose wire hangers are murder in clothes. You want thick wooden hangers that will last you a lifetime.
- tptacek 3y agoUnless space is at a premium, in which case a folding hanger almost halves the horizontal space clothes hanging takes.
- wlesieutre 3y agoThis looks thicker than typical wire hangers
- CSMastermind 3y agoFor anyone who wants the best hangers that money can buy, Kirby Allison is what you want: https://www.kirbyallison.com/pages/the-hanger-project-story https://www.kirbyallison.com/pages/the-hanger-project-story
- rkagerer 3y agoWhat makes them so spiffy?
- dan-robertson 3y agoI think you can buy better hangers fwiw. In particular, more accurately sized for the jacket and with more shape around the collar. Though obviously ‘better’ is relative – if you’re hanging shirts or trousers you don’t need nearly as much shape.
- fgdelcueto 3y agoWhen my son was about 5 months old, he was crawling in the bathroom floor while I was getting dressed in the adjacent walk-in closet. He was playing with the closet door and closed it. I didn't think much of it, but then I noticed that he had also opened a drawer which prevented me from opening the door from the closet (terrible apartment design!). I was stuck in the closet alone, without my phone, unable to get out. I panicked a little bit since it was early in the day and my spouse wouldn't return in about 10 hours. Long story short, I McGyver'ed my way out thanks to a wire hanger that I found in the closet: I straightened it and used it to push the drawer back in through the tiny slit that was left through the door and the frame. I used to hate wire hangers too, now I make sure I always have a few in every closet, just in case, you never know :)
- ReactiveJelly 3y agoI forgot who she was, so: > Giertz has previously branded herself as "the queen of shitty robots" on her YouTube channel, where she employs deadpan humor to demonstrate mechanical robots of her own creation to automate everyday tasks; despite working from a purely mechanical standpoint, they often fall short of practical usefulness, for comic effect.[9] Giertz's creations have included an alarm clock that slaps the user,
- troymc 3y agoKevin Scott (the CTO of Microsoft) interviewed her in an episode of his podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/simone-giertz-inventor-entrepreneur-robotics-enthusiast/id1381008946?i=1000568814817 https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/simone-giertz-inventor...
- neolefty 3y agoLex Fridman too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIo36F6Fsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIo36F6Fsg — great 2-hour conversation.
- pstuart 3y agoAh, I remember that. And I couldn't help but notice she had over 2M subscribers so clearly she's got a lot of fans already.
- wodenokoto 3y agoShe has tried (and quite successfully imho) to move away from that image and become a respectable creator/inventor. I think the highlights of her maker-career is Truckla, her Tesla she repurposed as a truck and drove to the cyber truck reveal. And her everyday calendar, which is a board of 365 LED and you can click each for everyday you complete whatever your everyday goal is and end the year with a lot board. As I recall it met and exceeded its kickstarter.
- nerdponx 3y agoI'm sure the success was partly due to the fact that the "shittiness" of the robots was because they were iterative prototypes, not because she was inept. Part of what's great about her (and other similar creators') content is that you get to actually see the design and development process, including the failures, which is both entertaining and educational.
- avar 3y agoIsn't the point of a coat hanger to hang your clothes uncrumpled? If you're compromising on that aspect, wouldn't wall hooks fit most use cases? For places where space is at a premium a normal coat hanger on a telescopic rod would be a viable alternative in many cases, i.e. have the clothes rotate almost 90°, and mostly overlap. You can also stack the coat hangers vertically, e.g. with cheap plastic brackets like these: https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ew6YWEt https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ew6YWEt There's surely good niche use cases for these, but looking at this advertisment I don't see why I'd want to go for this particular solution. The sales pitch would be more convincing if it was contrasted to other space saving clothes hanging techniques in existing use, rather than pointing out that the inventor was unable to find prior art for her particular solution.
- CuriousCosmic 3y agoThere is a pretty major difference between crumpled and folded. A soft/wide radius fold isn't going to leave wrinkles or a major crease but it may still be noticeable. A sharp/small radius fold will leave a crease but will be significantly less noticeable on most clothes than wrinkles. And either way the crease would be along a stress point where wearing the clothes would smooth the crease out quickly.
- avar 3y agoSpeaking of crumples, it's interesting that the final design makes the apparent compromise of not folding the clothes down the middle, but slightly off to the side. But in the discarded invention pile we can see an older design that folds down the exact middle (it has springs on the bottom).
- chis 3y agoStacking vertically does kinda get there but there are some clear downsides. You can't access clothes in the back without taking off the whole stack. And it's visually a lot worse: you're just looking at like 5 shirts flattened on the wall instead of a neat line of flat sleeves.
- 3y ago
- charcircuit 3y agoIf you want to save space why hang your clothes? Stacking them is easy and does not require another object to be used.
- eru 3y agoSome clothes do better hung up.
- etoxin 3y agoI've just started hanging all my shirts. Basically I have a set amount of coat hangers. If i want a new shirt I need to sacrifice another. It also makes drying way easier. Out of the washing machine, onto a coat hanger, onto the washing line, straight into the wardrobe once dry.
- jve 3y agoRead vs Write optimization. In stacking case, it is "expensive" to Read, I mean choose and pick and put the stack back so it aligns nicely. Plus folding the shirt in the first place takes more effort.
- charcircuit 3y ago>In stacking case, it is "expensive" to Read It's not a stack data structure. You can pull out items from the middle of a stack. >Plus folding the shirt in the first place takes more effort. This is a skill which can be optimized to be very quick to do.
- theshrike79 3y agoHow do you pull items out from the middle of a stack of neatly folded clothes without collapsing the whole stack? I really need a tutorial on this :D
- paxcoder 3y ago[dead]
- andrew_ 3y agoFirst reaction was; "This is really dumb. It'll take up twice the width." But after watching through to the end, Giertz comes off really genuine and it's an inspiring short story of failure and problem solving, and I love that. I believed at the end that she's solving a unique problem. Can't hate on it.
- mattmaroon 3y agoRVs frequently have closets where this is a problem. I ended up buying tiny hangers, but would rather have had this.
- andrew_ 3y agoExcellent point. Experienced that pain last year.
- Lamad1234 3y agoReminds me of "Noiseless completely silent drape runner"
- fbdab103 3y agoI have more questions about the enormously high bed stand in the opening shot. It immediately makes tons of sense (so much otherwise wasted vertical space in a room), but I have never seen such a thing.
- automatoney 3y agoIt's called a loft bed - this one would probably be considered a low loft. This kind of bed is also frequently seen in American university dorm rooms.
- fbdab103 3y agoAh of course. I had a loft bed in college, though it was hollow underneath for my desk. Seeing it as a less ramshackle structure with built-in drawers was new to me.
- afterburner 3y agoFalling hazard.
- nighthawk454 3y agoShe has a video on that too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inVvXS6gA8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inVvXS6gA8c
- quickthrower2 3y agoThat is cool. Would allow you to have shallow cupboards in small rooms.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoWe already have shallow cupboards in small rooms, the hook in nearly all hangers rotate, or you have a narrow rod with a wide hook. If you don't mind creased clothes you use a drawer or open shelves in the cupboard. Or, use kids hangers that are shorter.
- lyhour 3y ago[flagged]
- xwdv 3y agoFor me the killer app for a coat hanger would be one that allows you to remove the shirt easily with one hand and without stretching out the shirt or possibly breaking the hanger, just pull to remove the shirt right off the hanger. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to come up with this design, and I’m getting close, the secret is spheres
- Zanni 3y agoI came across the Kickstarter [1] for this as a Facebook ad and passed over it for all the reasons folks are citing below. Folding hanger? What's the use case? But watching the video, she's really put a lot of thought into this. The system with the paired rod is pretty slick. I love the notches for keeping the hangers spaced. This solves a problem not everyone has (not me, for instance--I have full-size closets), but I almost wish I did. I think it's going to do well. The Kickstarter is already double-funded. [1]https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/coat-hingers-foldable-coat-hangers https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/coat-hinge...
- user3939382 3y agoCue the low-quality foreign made knock off branded as “Amazon’s Choice” in 3… 2…
- spaceman_2020 3y agoAnd then the copies of the Chinese copies from Amazon itself… It’s theft all the way down
- dackerlunghack 3y agoLike meatballs and tortillas Any and all good ideas Whether tasty or not Instead of being forgot Will eventually be sold in IKEAs
- bertil 3y agoIf this is sold in Ikea, expect the most conflicted take about being Swedish since the war.
- schlauerfox 3y agoBut I'm sure she's patented it and amazon wouldn't want to get caught for intellectual property theft so will be diligent about policing sellers. They wouldn't want a bad reputation. And the customs office will destroy any imported product in violation of her patents.
- anonymfus 3y agoOriginal submission title was "Why Simone Giertz spent 3 years working on a coat hanger", moderators changed it to "I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger", the title of the video is "Why I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger".
- jjeaff 3y agothe very first sentence she says in her video is "I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger". is there something about the title that bothers you? I get when someone complains that a title is misleading, but I don't understand the commentary when the meaning is basically the same and the person commenting didn't even seem to have watched the first 3 seconds of the video.
- anonymfus 3y agoI am not related to her in any way other than being her subscriber on YouTube, yet my nickname is attached to the HackerNews submission, and with current title I expect that somebody will eventually think that I am she, or that I pretend to be her.
- fragmede 3y agoemail hn@ycombinator.com and ask dang to change it back, and tell him that reason.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- phito 3y agoYou're totally right. I really dislike the way mods edit titles here...
- drewtato 3y agoI get the reason, but there's no need to worry. Most people here know that links aren't personal unless it's a Show/Ask/Tell HN. You can find other examples on the front page. HN has a thing against questions in titles because a lot of them are clickbait. I don't care about this rule but that's why it was changed.
- afterburner 3y agoLove the iteration story, but like, what about pants? And thick winter coats? And stuff I don't want a weird potential fold line slightly to the left/right of centre? Her example rack only contains the clothes that would be perfect for this. My rack and hangers accommodate all my needs with one simple cheap design.
- ryaneager 3y agoYou can have more than one storage location for clothes; put items that wouldn’t fit on this rack in a closet.
- jplona 3y agoI think pants would work, if you put them in legs first.
- gilgoomesh 3y agoYeah, I normally put a number of items through the coat hanger and the hinge, here, would prevent that. I feel like it should come with some clips on the bottom for attaching items like trousers and other odd-shaped garments.
- yunohn 3y agoI normally fold my pants in half vertically and over the hanger. How do you normally do this? Some examples here, most of which should work with her hanger size: https://www.wikihow.com/Hang-Pants https://www.wikihow.com/Hang-Pants
- throwaway892238 3y agoFor others' reference: the "one leg over, then the other leg over the other way" is how you hang a bespoke suit's pants. No special hanger needed, the cloth's opposite drag provides enough friction to keep it on. The hangar for the cuffed pants is good for keeping the cuffs in shape (but who wears cuffs?)
- afterburner 3y agoI fold the legs together (fold along the zipper, basically) and put them through the hole, which folds them again roughly above the knee. There's very little room left on the hangar when I do that. Just like in that site's method. So given a regular hanger will have ~10% of the hanger left empty with pants on it, and the new hanger cuts the continuous length down by 40%, I don't see how it'll be wide enough. Maybe her small person pants fit, but it doesn't seem like mine would.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoI really wish she’d do a checkable garment bag. fingers crossed
- throwaway2990 3y agoThis is so bloody stupid that it’s amazing. It literally solves a valid issue. I have a closet that isn’t deep and have short coat hangers for a bunch of clothes but this would allow my clothes to not sag off the end and fit into the closet nicely and neatly. Off to kickstarter I go.
- raajg 3y agoRecently listened to her on Lex Fridman's podcast - would highly recommend. Made me want to dig out the raspberry pi's and esp32 boards from my closet and build something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIo36F6Fsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIo36F6Fsg
- johndhi 3y agoHmm - does it not generate a crease down the middle of all of your shirts?
- ninju 3y agoNope...creasing occurs by pressure applied to the fold. If you stack clothes on top of each other the bottom one will be more creased than the top ones. The fold as done here, without any external force, won't result in a crease
- Rebuff5007 3y agoTheres something so refreshing about these videos by makers (also adam savage, mark rober, lots of others) where they just emphasize how many failed attempts it takes before they end up with something "less terrible". Makes everyone seem so... human :)
- laweijfmvo 3y agoStuffMadeHere (https://www.youtube.com/@StuffMadeHere https://www.youtube.com/@StuffMadeHere) is one of my favorites in this regard.
- SushiHippie 3y agoDon't forget I did a thing https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJLZe_NoiG0hT7QCX_9vmqw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJLZe_NoiG0hT7QCX_9vmqw
- hardwaregeek 3y agoI could see this working really nicely for those clothes in the liminal space between clean and dirty that I inevitably toss on my chair right now.
- hashhar 3y agoI found https://www.kangaroohanger.com/ https://www.kangaroohanger.com/ to be a more practical and viable "actually better" clothes hanger.
- pengaru 3y agoNeat middleground between folded clothes heavily creased but stored compactly in drawers and entirely unfolded crease-free hanging clothes. I presume there'll be some creasing, but it's definitely saving space vs. conventional hangers. I wonder, if creasing is still an issue, if it'll be clearly asymmetrical especially on the back... Since the fold in the hanger isn't centered.
- kumarvvr 3y agoHer Truckla video is hilarious but serious at the same time ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A
- fbdab103 3y agoShe has a fake car commercial video for it as well, that is just top tier parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R35gWBtLCYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R35gWBtLCYg
- cco 3y agoImagine my surprise when, after watching Truckla all those years ago, I saw the Cyber Truck's design. Simone literally put the design on a platter for Tesla and they managed to not only screw it up, they still haven't made it four years later.
- theshrike79 3y agoA model S based Yute would sell like hotcakes in Australia :D
- mkl 3y agoUte, short for utility vehicle: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ute https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ute
- theshrike79 3y agoAh, the Australian pronunciation is throwing me off, TIL :)
- laweijfmvo 3y agoA model 3 (or maybe model y) platform-based truck would be incredible edit: I've been told they're the same platform
- maxglute 3y agoPull out retractable closet rod. https://www.amazon.ca/Retractable-Adjustable-Wardrobe-Clothing-Extendable/dp/B099RWJ1GY?th=1 https://www.amazon.ca/Retractable-Adjustable-Wardrobe-Clothi... Mount under shelf. Use high quality hanger that doesn't damage or crease. No extra folding action. Put nice article of clothing in front and looks very nice. Turning storage 90 degrees for shallow storage solves more problems than folding clothes in half. Having seen tons of these in show rooms, I dare say it's a long solved problem. Also there's rods with angled notches to turn hangers 45 degrees.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoMuch goofier looking though.
- maxglute 3y agoThere are nice looking high end options and plastic aliexpress versions. And everything in between. Bonus, the design works for pants or textiles since it does everything normal hanger does. These "space saving" solutions have been thought through for decades. I like the aesthetic of her design, but it kind of fails at being a good versatile hanger. Seems like it's good for storing a few articles of frequently used clothing where one doesn't need to consider long term creasing, basically a slight upgrade from a few nails on the wall.
- hobofan 3y agoOr also just coat hangers that have a rotating top (most with a wooden body and a metal top have that). There were also some really viable solutions displayed on the Google image search that were just glossed over. The way it's presented in the video it does look really nice, but having to pair it with one of their rods is kind of limiting.
- maxglute 3y agoYeah, my main gripe is the design seems like a subpar hanger. If she's going ditch purity of wood or steel wire, with bits of plastic, go all the way and have nice little molded end for shoulders. Or coat the wire in velvet which is life changing upgrade in terms of anti slip (she has muh silicon stoppers). Also would be nice if she extended horizontal neck of hanger out with a stop to keep fabric away from the back/wall so the crease is not rubbing against a surface. Just little ideas which I feel like she must have considered with 100+ iterations and the result is functionally subpar. Granted aestehtically simply and pleasing to some.
- mNovak 3y agoI was also definitely surprised this didn't already exist; but hey I never thought of it either! My apartment has a bunch of bookshelves with hanging bars in them (?) definitely not big enough for normal hangers unless you turn them sideways and lose a bunch of space. On this design though, my biggest criticism would be that it requires the hanger to be leaning against the wall when folded, to not fall at an angle. While that's fine for the co-designed rack she has, it makes them a lot less useful on their own or in other randomly wall-to-rack spaced closets (even says so in the kickstarter). The simple solution is to move the hook to be centered over the folded hanger, so it's balanced when folded. It'd look super goofy and not hang right unfolded, but that's probably fine. Surprised none of the prototypes tried that.
- srijanj 3y agoA masterclass in persistence and resilience.
- qwertox 3y agoAnd as soon as I saw it I thought what a good solution for getting the hangers inside of the neck opening without stretching the fabric, but the purpose of halving the required storage space is just genius.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway892238 3y agoI want to make V1 of this myself, but actually the cost of the plywood and the metal hinge is probably more costly than this product. I hope they can get it into big stores.
- ipsum2 3y agoI used to like her videos, but found out that she takes other people's work and passes it off as her own. This video is a good example. Anyone reading the title and watching the video, it appears that she's done all of the work iterating on the prototypes. No one else is mentioned in doing any of the work. Only in the comments does she post "If you have any technical questions, my co-inventor @stumcconnel will be here helping answer stuff!" So not only did she not invent this by herself, she's referring to someone else for technical questions. This isn't the first time she's done this. It's just a pet peeve as someone who is technical and has gotten credit assigned to someone else. /soapbox
- dc3k 3y ago> No one else is mentioned in doing any of the work. She mentions two people by name in the video
- theshrike79 3y agoAll companies need a face, Simone clearly is the one for her brand. She keeps talking about how "we" went through iterations in the video too, not claiming to be the sole inventor and designer. It's not like the people doing presentations for Apple, Google or Samsung 100% made the stuff themselves either.
- BlindEyeHalo 3y agoI am just assuming that she bankrolled the development herself from the income her youtube makes: How is this different from any tech CEO going on stage saying "We created this amazing thing"? It's not like they personally developed this.
- meigwilym 3y agoPerhaps the co-inventor hates talking to camera and is perfectly happy that she does this part of the process.
- Timshel 3y agoAt the end we can never know but the fact that she may have now delegated the handling of the production to someone else does not exactly mean she did not work on the original idea/prototype. As a single data point someone linked one of her previous video (from 2years ago) on her bed and funnily enough in it you can see some coat hingers prototype : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inVvXS6gA8c&t=984s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inVvXS6gA8c&t=984s
- vikramkr 3y agoHonestly I'm most surprised by how few people seem to recognize the channel lol. I figured maker YouTube and the open sauce type crowd would have a bigger level of representation here but I guess we all live in our bubbles!
- 6stringmerc 3y agoI live in North Texas what the fuck is a coat hangar gonna do for me compared to the back of a chair for a couple months? If you think I'm being crass, I got this perspective from here. A rural Chinese student went to the big City. One classmate gave a pitch about a startup for family name / style napkins to sell. He couldn't help himself but show how most of the people in the country used napkins. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and they were offended. Congratulations on your accomplishment, and as a creative person who constantly feels the wrath of rejection due to people not seeing the inherent utility of music as a pathway to happiness...this will go on my wall next to the toilet that encourages kids to poop in it by talking to them.
- neontomo 3y agoIt sounds like you’re stringing a couple of anecdotes together to make a point that this is useless, which it isn’t. Lots of people live in tiny apartments, where sections of your house need to serve more than one purpose (kitchen inside a cupboard for example). If I was in this situation I would consider buying this product.
- phreeza 3y agoMy great-grandfather had a factory making light furniture and coat hangers, and had several patents for types of adjustable coat hangers. He was expropriated by the soviets after the second world war, in eastern Germany and fled to the west. It's fun to imagine an alternative universe where I am the heir of an adjustable coat hanger empire.
- defrost 3y agoThis week on The adventures of Trip Phreeza of the Well Hung Dynasty Phreeza IIIrd goes on a roadtrip to Monte Carlo with the twins of Clan Aglet...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fluxem 3y agoHere’s an idea. Instead of the rod being parallel with the wall, have multiple small rods perpendicular to the wall. They can easily accommodate full size coat hangers. Problem solved
- cntrmmbrpsswrd 3y agoI like this simple solution, but it makes it difficult to see all your clothes and which article you want.
- rplnt 3y agoIt's common for them to be stacked like stairs or if there's more space to slide out, so that's not usually an issue. Sometimes it's kinda both (stairs that pop up).
- ansible 3y ago> Here’s an idea. Instead of the rod being parallel with the wall, have multiple small rods perpendicular to the wall. They can easily accommodate full size coat hangers. Problem solved That takes up more wall space, and makes it harder to see what everything is. I get that this is not the product for you (or me either), but don't compare the 3 years of on again, off again mulling over the design with your 20 seconds of thought on the problem space.
- rplnt 3y ago> with your 20 seconds of thought on the problem space It's a solved problem, is what I imagine OP meant by the "idea". It's not theirs. Those products exist. It's not harder to see what everything is because they come in variants where they are stacked vertically, can pop out, can slide out. I agree it might not be as space efficient, but at least you are not limited to thin items that don't crease. And it's just a rack and you can use $0.50 coat hangers instead of $6 ones. I do see the beauty of this design, and it can be useful when you have limited width as well (as the van pictured), so this is not a hate on that, just that this is not a revolution, just a different take on it.
- senthil_rajasek 3y agoCongratulations to the inventor. But if space (depth) is the issue then there are many existing solutions like a "multi layer" hanger. I just googled "multi layer hanger". May be this has a use case or it simply scratches the creator's itch.
- pta2002 3y agoI think it solves a different issues. This is aiming to solve a depth issue (e.g. a deeper coat rack would make a door hit it, as shown in the video) while a multi layer hanger seems to be more a "I don't have enough space for all the hangers" (but importantly, you have space for at least one!)
- BlindEyeHalo 3y agoI really like her videos but I don't understand how this solves the problem in a better way than any of the obvious alternatives and it kind of bothers me that she doesn't address this at all in the video. All she does is say "there are no folding coat hangers on the market". The simplest thing would be to just get a hanger with a rotating hook and hang it at a ~45 degree angle and I don't see how her solution is better, especially considering she wants to have over $6 per hanger.
- mettamage 3y agoShe did address it by browsing quickly through a Google Images page, which indicates what kind of solutions she encountered. Nevertheless, fair question.
- rplnt 3y agoShe looked for foldable coat hangers, not for a space saving solutions. I guess that's fair if that's what she wanted to achieve, but it would be nice to hear why this is a better solution. Looks nicer is a good enough answer of course.
- bhelkey 3y agoShe says that there are foldable coat hangers but none fold while hanging while holding clothes. I have no idea if this is true or not but that is the problem statement.
- krisoft 3y agoThat sounds like a solution attempt masquerading as a problem statement. Repeating it does not answer the question: “but why do you want a foldable coat hanger which can fold while hanging”.
- bhelkey 3y ago> Repeating it does not answer the question: “but why do you want a foldable coat hanger which can fold while hanging”. The goal of folding something is almost always to reduce its length. These are nine inches long when folded, ordinary hangers are seventeen inches long. [1] [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/coat-hingers-foldable-coat-hangers https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/coat-hinge...
- gardenhedge 3y agoMy first point: This post is part of a launch campaign. We don't want all kickstarter projects to be listed on HN do we? My second point: Meh. I might find it interesting if I found it while browsing in a dollar store but it's not exactly intriguing stuff.
- jackdoe 3y agoI just love the maker's mind. > I want something that does not exist, I will make it. Making things has never been so accessible, if you don't know how to start, join a community and ask, if they are hostile, just ask chatgpt and start from there. 3d printers are 200$, esp32 is the same cost as arduino nano. Want to make AI things? Make them. Want to make coat hangers? Make them. Want to make a book stand? Make it. I have few bank PCBs, and every day I hold one and I ask it 'what do you want to be?' and just wait and listen, it doesn't tell me, so I make it into what I want, and then try again the next day. As David Lynch says, ideas are very quiet, you have to learn how to listen, so far I have not heard one, but maybe some day..
- fxtentacle 3y agoTo me, this really shows that marketing is now the most crucial skill. It has become easy and affordable to design products, the process is now almost fully commodified with all those OEM and production services. The only thing that now stands between your idea and financial success is your ability to reach the target market, i.e. marketing. Also, such a slick KickStarter campaign typically costs $10k plus ad spend if you buy it from an agency. Roughly 25% of the final price will be marketing and ads. I know because I've seen first hand that you need a 3400% mark-up on the production costs to profitably sell bikinis in the US. These hangers will also likely cost <$0.1 to make at scale. It's the initial investments into CNCed molds and the upfront marketing that determine the price.
- pknerd 3y agoTrue. As a developer I could make any thing but don't know how to sell. People lik e peter levios can earn millions with a single index.php and SQLite by reading tutorials. And now gpt would make non programmer more free from devs.
- konschubert 3y agoMaking a product, certifying it and making sure it’s safe is also hard. But marketing is extremely important and it’s just a very different skill than tech. I make these epaper calendar displays. https://shop.invisible-computers.com https://shop.invisible-computers.com I have invested thousands of hours into making them as good as possible. You couldn’t tell from my website :D I would probably profit much more if I just stopped improving them and focused on marketing. But I just feel much more drawn to improving the product.
- georgesimon 3y agoI was hoping this would be the coat hanger I have in my ideas bin for the last three years. I need a coat hanger that can be operated one-handed. (accessibility being invention's other mother) If her design could be easily folded with one hand, letting you insert it into the neck of a T-shirt, and then it automatically reopens by spring, I'd have comfy clothes.
- brettermeier 3y ago> accessibility being invention's other mother Nice quote, have to remember.
- Beijinger 3y ago[flagged]
- hackerindonesia 3y ago[flagged]
- hackerindonesia 3y agoYouTube hai jika anda memberikan silver play baton anda selamat whahaha
- lofaszvanitt 3y ago3 years on this? What a blatant lie. This existed for more than 30 years.
- Furbes 3y agoThis is great!! Good job Simone :)
- causi 3y agoI'd be interested in tests to see just how much space it actually saves. From personal experience, you can fit quite a few shirts on that same on-the-wall rail using a normal coathanger with a rotating head. Not that this isn't better, I'm just not sure it's "six bucks per hanger and using a normal rod instead of buying ours isn't recommended PS you can't use them for pants" better.
- fisian 3y agoI love when people see a problem and they spend a (seemingly) insane amount of time, work and passion to solve it. I saw a similar thing some time ago posted here about designing better pockets for pants. Finally found it again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38301280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38301280
- Unbefleckt 3y agoIt bothers me so much that the initial prototype and final product and everything in between are largely the same. I feel like there's potential for some abstract thinking.
- gregoriol 3y ago141450€ for coat hangers on which you can't actually hang a real winter coat... (real being one that would be tough enough to not fold in half) that looks a lot like a Juicero
- blkhawk 3y agopretty much all the stuff i wear to the office would work on those - this is meant for "ready access" storage not seasonals like a coat
- sesm 3y agoIf the author of the video wanted to solve just her particular case, she would make a diagonal cutouts on her dresser beam and hang the clothes at an angle using standard hangers. She has enough room for that, plus it would look stylish. Over time I came to appreciate solutions like that, you don't want to always solve a general problem.
- brainzap 3y agooh my god you solved the problem, quick make a yt and kickstarter
- kuon 3y agoI love the mindset and the design process. But I never hung any cloths so it is not for me.
- al_be_back 3y agoI spent 3 hours writing this message ... that is, I started 3 hours ago, paused that immediately, then went and did other things for 2:59:30hrs, finally I came back and finished typing this textual masterpiece. She's a successful inventor & youtuber, good on her. the product is not bad actually, a great impulse buy (gifting), just not for me.
- __float 3y agoThis is a very critical reply, and for what? Throwing "just not for me" at the end doesn't negate the 95% of the message that's unnecessarily harsh.
- al_be_back 3y agoby your logic, ending your reply with "unnecessarily harsh" means your message was "unnecessarily harsh" if I didn't agree with some of the preceding sentences? such as your fictitious stats "95% of the message". it's not for me means that I wouldn't buy the product or invest/fund it, but i saw potential in two market segments "impulse buying" and "gifting". my message was mixed and clearly stated that - usually businesses/inventors/makers like mixed feedback. all the best.
- asimpletune 3y agoI had a good friend who studied industrial design, and they told me that these kind of improvements are the most impressive. Fixing things we all use and didn’t realize needed fixing.
- newsclues 3y agoWhy is this not a thing? Clothes hangers are designed to keep the structure of the clothing, if this design is used you might as well fold your shirts and use less storage space. Seems obvious if you’ve had to wear a perfect military uniform you pressed. Three years and no one mentioned this, is this real content or is this fake TV?
- Garvi 3y agoThis is a solved problem. Solved by making the hook rotatable so you can hang the clothes at an angle and thus save the same amount of room as with the discussed method, without all the downsides. I wonder if that inventor was also showered in cash and attention. I wonder if it also took them 3 years.
- sagebird 3y agoI think there is more to it and should not be dismissed out of hand. Upload a photo of this proposed system in action. Prove it doesn't look like a mess. See if the wastage at start and end of rack is problematic. Then upload a video of putting a random clothing item in and also removing one. There is a reason people don't do this, try it and see.
- Garvi 3y agoId say my proposed system is the one most commonly in use. If you google "coat hanger" I'd say 90% of them have turning heads. What I don't see existing is shallow closets.
- OJFord 3y ago...that creases your clothes? And demoed with hanging a t-shirt, just fold it. All but the cheapest (single piece moulded plastic) coat hangers have hooks that swivel, so it could hang at an angle solving this anyway. There are also products on the market that collapse down vertically, so you have multiple items on one hook, which as long as it also swivels solves this problem too and gives much more capacity. The folding design puts creases in, and takes twice as much space horizontally - if you have the outward space problem you're probably short of that too. But it's a nice video of designing and prototyping and creating something, I might subscribe/watch some more of her stuff even though I think this particular solution (and especially as a kickstarted product) is silly.
- mcv 3y agoIt's Simone Giertz! Internet famous for making useless machines and shitty robots, has now apparently pivoted to making more useful things. It doesn't solve a problem I have, and I worry that they might break under heavier clothes, but it's a cool and surprisingly simple idea, and probably perfect for people with tiny houses. Which is probably a growing demographic.
- 2C64 3y agoI'm baffled by the comments that are criticizing this because there are other solutions as if there is only one true solution to this problem.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- buggythebug 3y agoMy biggest issue with coat hangers - including this one - is that they are all thin so forget putting heavier shirts, sweaters, and especially jackets on them - they'll stretch out part of the shoulder and you have this visible piece of material sticking out when you put it on.
- llamaInSouth 3y agohow thick would they need to be
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- woadwarrior01 3y agoI just saw the Kickstarter[1]. The margins on these coat hangers look so good that it'd make NVIDIA blush. [1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/coat-hingers-foldable-coat-hangers https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/coat-hinge...
- giarc 3y agoWhere is the COGS mentioned?
- andrewstuart2 3y agoTrue, I think it's fair that these hangars are a bit more expensive, given they're clearly more niche (so no huge production runs are happening) and given the extra thickness you can clearly see just looking at them.
- Workaccount2 3y agoThe margins are likely not that great. Small run hardware manufacturing is extremely expensive. It's not until you are doing volumes in the millions, the factory has invested in custom tooling, and you're buying material by the truckload straight from the manufacturer that prices really start to collapse. Right now she is probably getting the steel off the shelf, the plastic pieces from a small shop, the forming from another small shop, and the construction done by hand. All expensive relatively speaking.
- woadwarrior01 3y agoWooden hangers retail for around €1 here, and it's ~2.5x cheaper if you look at AliExpress. Note that both are retail, the wholesale prices are probably half of that. €19 for a hanger is ridiculously expensive, even if they're individually hand made. Granted it includes shipping, but even if shipping is 50% of the cost, it's still absurdly expensive. She mentions in the video that the plastic pieces are injection moulded over the wire, that's a clear indication that it isn't all done by hand. This is very likely being manufactured in a factory in China, with a 1000-2000% markup. But it's got a great story attached to it, and that's what sells it.
- teddyh 3y agoSeems like they won’t work without the special notched rod with evenly spaced grooves.
- wodenokoto 3y agoWhy not?
- teddyh 3y agoI obviously haven’t tried it, but the video does not show the new hanger being used on the old rod that was implied to be the initial goal of the project. Instead, they only show the hanger being used on rods with special grooves or notches cut into it. Making such a special rod seems to be a lot of work, and I assume that they wouldn’t do that unless it was necessary. But most importantly, it seems to me that the hanger would just collapse if put on a regular smooth rod.
- good8675309 3y agoAh, the classic side quest into a seemingly useless project - I can relate. Spending three years on a coat hanger sounds just like the kind of rabbit hole I'd fall into. It's usually more about the journey and scratching that itch than the end product. But turning it into a business? Now that's impressive. Most of my hyperfocus side quests end up as forgotten userscripts or abandoned github projects. Kudos to her for not only sticking with it but also turning it into something tangible and potentially profitable!
- bear141 3y agoCan’t this already easily be accomplished and even flatter to the wall simply by using a hanger with a swiveling head? Only downsides compared to this invention would be the way the different items nested together and the fact that they stuck out to the sides 50% of each hanger at the ends?
- SiempreViernes 3y agoWell, being nested together leads to the downside that you can only easily add and remove things at the end of the rack, while with OPs solution you can easily insert and remove from random points of the rack.
- artursapek 3y agoArray vs Hash table!
- victor9000 3y agoSeriously, and you can accomplish something similar with a regular hanger and just a single nail. You hang the hanger on the nail flat against the wall, then the next hanger can be daisy chained on the exposed neck of the previous hanger and so on.
- y04nn 3y agoI really like the idea, but it only makes sense if you custom build your hanger on the wall, that is, there is no commercially available (afaik) hanger that would make this useful. But this may be an opportunity for a second product and sell it with the coat hangers, and people would spend more on furniture than a coat hanger.
- mattlondon 3y agoThe rail is part of the Kickstarter
- Exuma 3y agoReally great video... great job!!!
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoIt took James Dyson five years and 5,127 prototypes to create a vacuum cleaner based on industrial shop cyclone vacuum technology.
- ixtli 3y agoI'm sure others have said it too, but Simone is especially talented.
- hammock 3y agoThe GIF on the kickstarter is a nice TLDR: https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/043/049/335/c230c7314b0668e7249151859c2222c3_original.gif?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=680&fit=max&v=1699919698&gif-q=50&q=92&s=5c27ce687d41261cb7a3d4f84b926c03 https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/043/049/335/c230c7314b0668e... Why doesn't it fold in the opposite direction, so that the fold faces out rather than in? Seems to me that orientation would be better for organization and finding what you're looking for at a glance in the closet. If the hook part could be rotated (as is in common design of other hangers), such orientation could be easily accomplished. As the hook is fixed, it cannot be.
- cosmojg 3y agoI'm having a hard time imagining this. How would you get it to lie flush against the wall?
- hammock 3y agoYou would need to position the clothes rod not so close to the wall. There is another common design of closets that this design omits - adjustable depth of rod, via repositioning of the rod flanges https://www.lowes.com/pd/Project-Source-1-5-16-in-Flange-Set/50005274?store_code=3284 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Project-Source-1-5-16-in-Flange-Set...
- NarcisMirandes 3y agoI like it very much. The concept, how she communicates, and the fact that she solves her own problem first. I do not know how will she prevent people from copying it? Amazon is terrible, if something works, many will copy it for half the price. And it's not fare.
- ThowAawayYeet96 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- giardini 3y agoThree years on a clothes hanger design? She's paid to do this?! "There's a sucker born every minute!" - Old saying https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote-theres-a-sucker-born-every-minute-1db9a7220d34 https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote...
- layer8 3y agoWon’t this create pressure marks on the clothes where the hanger pushes against the wall? Since it’s not hanging symmetrically like a normal coat hanger, the hanger will tilt backwards against the wall due to gravity pulling the front part down.
- lost_tourist 3y agoI wonder if she considered making "extensions that are a bit taller than the vertical distance of the hangers and then you could get even more stuff on one rack as you stagger the shorter and taller hangers.
- NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago[flagged]
- novok 3y agoShe should add a version with shoulder pads, those wires can be pretty deforming