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I 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?

by Zanni 3y ago

I 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 ago
Cue the low-quality foreign made knock off branded as “Amazon’s Choice” in 3… 2…
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  And then the copies of the Chinese copies from Amazon itself… It’s theft all the way down
  - dackerlunghack 3y ago
    Like meatballs and tortillas Any and all good ideas Whether tasty or not Instead of being forgot Will eventually be sold in IKEAs
    - bertil 3y ago
      If this is sold in Ikea, expect the most conflicted take about being Swedish since the war.
  - schlauerfox 3y ago
    But 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.
    - gpt5 3y ago
      You cannot patent a foldable coat hanger. The only thing she could patent is the specific mechanism she used to enable folding, but I doubt the copycats would use exactly the same design.
      - nitwit005 3y ago
        Technically, they could patent every variant that was in her bin, which would at least present some challenge to a knock off.
        withinboredom 3y ago
        You can't do that IIRC, because it is based on prior art in the public domain. Just like you can't patent a chair with 5 legs. There's also no reason to patent that many things for the same thing. You only need to be sufficiently vague to how it folds. IANAL, but I've gotten a few patents rejected.
        snitty 3y ago
        >You can't do that IIRC, because it is based on prior art in the public domain. Just like you can't patent a chair with 5 legs. A point she made in the video (and at least partially confirmed by a quick patent search by me) is that there really isn't one of these in the prior art. > There's also no reason to patent that many things for the same thing. You only need to be sufficiently vague to how it folds. As far as patents are concerned, those are the same. Getting a patent broad enough to cover all her embodiments of the invention is the same as getting a patent that covers all the prototypes. In the US you get up to three "free" independent claims per patent application, that can cover different approaches that are non-overlapping. But they can't be addressed to different inventions. In other words, you can get a single patent on three reasonable variations of a folding coat hanger and slight variations thereof. You cannot get a single patent that covers a folding coat hanger, and precision timing device, and a popcorn maker. Source: IAAPL
      - matsemann 3y ago
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    "Design wants to be free"
- polski-g 3y ago
  If she has a patent, she can sue not only Amazon, but purchasers of the product as well.
  - user3939382 3y ago
    In theory. Anyone can sue anyone at any time for any reason. Winning is different. In reality if you don’t have a bottomless legal warchest, good luck.
alberth 3y ago
The production quality of that video was super high. No doubt that’s helping a lot.
beAbU 3y ago
Worth noting this is Simone Giertz, she's a very popular maker on the internet, and her youtube channel has over 2M subscribers. A lot of her funding on KS is porbably based on that alone. It is a cool design, but 3 years? She definitely worked on other projects in that time. Ultimately the volume taken up by the clothes is the same, you either have a shallow but wide closet, or deep but narrow. If you are not worried about the crease this might cause down the middle, then you might as well fold the garment and put it on a shelf? Also, where are trousers supposed to go now?
- chx 3y ago
  > If you are not worried about the crease this might cause down the middle, There is a claim this won't happen.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  > It is a cool design, but 3 years? She definitely worked on other projects in that time. She also had multiple treatments for brain cancer. Though I think that was before this project I imagine such a thing takes a considerable toll.
  - beAbU 3y ago
    Oh yes and that! Must've been a terrible experience. So yeah, "3 years" is a little click-baity, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do for marketing.
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        That's not nice.
      - marcomourao 3y ago
        I love dark humour but this isn't even funny or clever.
morsch 3y ago
The notched rod looks neat, but isn't rifling through the clothes on the rack kind of an essential part of the experience? Can't do that with a notched rod. First time I'm illustrating a comment with stock footage: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/studio-shot-of-hand-rifling-through-clothes-on-stock-videomaterial/1011-37 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/studio-shot-of-hand...
- ehnto 3y ago
  It's for your own clothes if you are space limited, if you can store full hangers then you just wouldn't use these.
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  I think the idea is in a large part aimed at van-lifers, so a notched rod could be quite beneficial
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    There are too few of them to justify the production run costs.
    - cr3ative 3y ago
      And yet, the Kickstarter has achieved triple their goal already.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        Many people back kickstarters to back the person, not the product, and Simone is well known and nice enough that I think that enough people would do that regardless of whether or not they needed these hangers.
    - sixo 3y ago
      There is no reason to believe this.
  - 3y ago
j-a-a-p 3y ago
Not the product is the goal, it is the journey.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jolmg 3y ago
> The Kickstarter is already double-funded. More than triple-funded just 5 hours after your comment.
bambax 3y ago
Yeah, it's kind of cool. But $20 for one foldable coat hanger is pretty outrageous, esp. considering that wire coat hangers you get at a cleaner's are virtually free, and you can fold them by hand. Not the same thing! Sure! But close. And almost free.
- runamuck 3y ago
  I paid about $22 each to fill my closet with cherry wood coat hangers from the Container Store.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  Gotta finance the past 3 years of living, and employees apparently, minus what she made in that time from other projects which she says was operating a loss (but could be marginally lossy who knows)
  - autoexec 3y ago
    She seems pretty confident that these hangers are a good idea. She could make up the costs of development over a longer period of time and still come out way ahead by the end. At $20 a hanger she risks turning a lot of people away. The kind of people who are really pressed for closet/clothes hanging space don't typically have $500+ to spend on hangers. A lower price to get consumers to try them out and even replace a bunch of their existing hangers with folding ones could get her a lot more sales and let volume make up for smaller profits.
    - lucb1e 3y ago
      Agreed, that's the gamble one takes when deciding a price and generating hype from the start. I might also have put it lower, being rather cheapskate myself (or at least, not paying more than the absolute lowest price from the sustainable product options, which usually means... :( ).
adolph 3y ago
> Folding hanger? What's the use case? Anyone who watched the first Indiana Jones film knows how sinister and awesome folding hangers are. The use case is to be so prepared in life you have one in your leather trench coat to hang it up like a civilized person.
yieldcrv 3y ago
> The Kickstarter is already double-funded. It’s just public posted sales revenue for a product that didn’t need a kickstart. But I understand, in comparison to kickstarters that don’t succeed at all, yes.

Damogran6 3y ago

I marvel at the pedantry on HN sometimes...the 3 year comment is the thing you're locking on? You can only mention the period of time something was developed if NOTHING else occurs at the same time? You can't multitask? Eat? Sleep? Use the restroom? It took 3 years from the first thought to the start of the marketing campaign. So what? She's moderately successful and a neat person, don't inject negativity into what is becoming less and less common on the internet, and what used to make it great. My though was that, for being known for shitty robots, Simone came up with something that really wasn't shitty at all.

Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
>the 3 year comment is the thing you're locking on? What do you mean by locking on? >You can only mention the period of time something was developed if NOTHING else occurs at the same time? I think "I worked on a coat hanger for 3 years would be more clear." "I spent 3 years" literaly means that three years were used (spent) on it. Also it being the title of the video implies that. Basically, in terms of the title of the video, which is supposed to tell you the main idea, from the fact that the title isn't "I developed a new coat hanger" but "I spent 3 years working on a new coathanger," one might think that the three years were literaly spent on the coathanger. Putting numbers in a video title genrally improves clickrate. Also the fact that it took 3 years is more of a shocking claim so that in itself improves the click rate, which is somewhat dimminished if she took a 1.5 year break in between or something. I havn't watched the video by the way so my thoughts are based only on what I think the title implies, which is anyway what the discussion at hand is. All this said I do think it is possible three year were spent (or spent to the maximum extent possible). Lead times can be long in manufacuring and it is possible to spend a year just on verification and testing. The past few years has also seen a lot of supply chain issues.
- Damogran6 3y ago
  3 years is 9.467e+7 seconds. What percentage of that time would you think she'd have to spend, in order for the title to be accurate? Sure, she's playing to the algorithm, but it's far from the most egregous example I've seen of it.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
    To me the lower bound is not taking long breaks from the project. I know I've "spent three years" on projects that I worked on for a month and then continued for another month years later. And if I start them again now then it would be even longer.
aa-jv 3y ago
The pedantry is just passive-aggressive hostility. There is a high jealousy avoidance factor in such responses - finding such an 'obvious' or 'easy' fault devalues the subject, so the jealousy fades away. "I have no need to respect/honor/be envious of this persons achievements because _insertSlightHere_ .." Seriously, think about this next time the criticality levels hit too damn high. Folks can't deal with inequity easily these days, it seems .. its harder and harder to maintain an interest in others when so much depends on our own ability to be interesting ...