For the past few months, Nelson and I have been talking about rearranging all of our upholstery fabrics here in the store. Typically, we arrange our fabrics by color. It looks nice having a rainbow that moves from whites to deep purple. Sometimes I stand in front of the fabric wall and pass by the fabric I want over and over again…frustrating!!! Of course, it ends up being right in front of me but, its really hard to find a particular fabric when it is floating in a sea of fellow creams of the same shade.
Many times when we’re working with a customer who wants to order a sofa or chair, we want to make a fabric suggestion, but finding the fabric? Not too easy when the fabrics are arranged by colorway. Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams’ fabrics are much easier to find now that they’re alphabetized by fabric name!
Most of the time we know each of the fabrics, especially Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams’, by their name like Whit-Espresso or Keswick-Lake or the like. So, we decided to put all of our fabrics in alphabetical order by fabric name and see how it would work. So far, its like a dream! We both can pull a fabric much faster than before to show customers.
But you know when you suggest a change, Nelson can make it an extended project..for both of us.
He decided to build an entire new rack system for our Rowe fabrics. We took the existing fabrics off their cumbersome ring system and clipped each fabric on its own hanger. We’re talking over 400 hangers folks! And all this was after Nelson reverted to his childhood and rigged up an amazing erector-set for displaying the fabrics. Can you tell he’s in his element?!
We bought about 450 hangers and used them all. Much easier to see the whole range of fabric choices when they are hanging up, instead of on rings.
As you can see, the final product is pretty cool. We can access all fabrics from either line with ease***.
***After all this work I can actually say that I can tell you which fabric is which in the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams line by touch alone. Just another added extra benefit of organizing them by name.