Out, out, !@#% spot!

Never trust a dry cleaner who keeps only one kind of stain remover in the back. In every Red Hanger location, we keep no less than ten different kinds on hand, and we know how to use them. 

It only sounds like overkill. It’s necesssary because every kind of stain has its own peculiarities. For salsa, you need one kind of stain remover. For gravy, you need another. You need yet another for coffee. (Coffee, by the way, is not something we recommend spilling on clothes. We’ll do our best with it, of course. But coffee is so permanent, it is even used as a fabric dye.)

Just because you know which stain remover to use doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. Each type behaves a little differently depending on the kind of fabric, and fabric finish, being cleaned. For that matter, each type of fabric and finish is finicky in terms of how you should handle it, stain remover aside.

Which means that to remove stains effectively and safely, you need to know your stuff. You need to know which of ten different kinds of stain remover to use, what kind of fabrics to use them on, and how to handle each kind of fabric.

That’s why we don’t turn new employees loose on stains. We keep up on the science, and teach it to our most experienced people only. Some of them have been with us for over a decade. So when you bring us a stain, you can relax. You’ll know that the person who works on it is thoroughly trained and experienced on the science of stain removal and fabric care.

Extra $50 giveaway — this month only

Utah Environmental Quality Dept Praises Red Hanger

Red Hanger is grateful to have been recognized—again—by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality

We believe that good environmental practice is good business practice, though not for reasons most people might think.

We’d love it if it brought lots of customers to Red Hanger, but the fact is, being environmentally responsible has pretty much zero marketing effect. But that’s OK, because we don’t do it for marketing purposes. We do it because we accept the responsibility to care for the planet we live and work on.

Here are some of the things Red Hanger does to be environmentally friendly:

• We are replacing all of our dry cleaning machines with new ones that use the earth-friendliest cleaning fluids ever. We’re more than halfway there. The new machines, we might add, aren’t cheap. Otherwise, we’d have replaced all of them at once instead of a few each year. And no, the government isn’t making us do it.
• We recently switched to wrapping all orders with clear plastic that’s 100% biodegradable. The government isn’t making us do that, either.
• We used to wrap a paper banner around the top of every order so that, as you drove around, people would see an unmistakably big “Red Hanger” in the rear passenger window. It was cheap advertising, but tough on trees and landfills, so we stopped.
• We re-use hangers. If they’re really in sad shape, we recycle them. This is big. You’d be surprised at how many car bodies you could make out of the metal hangers that end up in our landfills. So please be sure to return empty hangers with your orders.
• When we print letterhead, brochures, direct mail, coupons, you-name-it, we use recycled paper. Even though recyled paper costs more.
• We installed equipment that lets us track clothing without having to use those annoying paper tags. This saves trees and reduces trash. It also means no one at Red Hanger is going to assault your clothing with pins, staples, or plastic fasteners.

We’re serious about the environment. If you have suggestions for us, please contact us by clicking here.

Button Physics

Or, Why the Danged Things Break

Who would have thought that the depth of the indented part in the middle of a button would affect how long the button lasts?

You may have a big, thick, cool-looking button. But if the bowl in the middle (where the holes are) is too deep, it weakens the whole button. That’s why big, thick, cool-looking buttons seem to break all the time, while run-of-the-mill, normal-looking buttons seem to endure endless torture. Ironically—referring to irony, not to ironing, although a case could be made for both—big, thick, cool-looking buttons tend to cost a lot more. That’s because they aren’t designed to last. They’re designed to look big, thick, and cool.

Over the years we have noted that some brands of shirt are pretty reliable and consistent when it comes to durable buttons. These include Van Heusen, Kirkland (Costco), Brooks Brothers, Stafford (JCPenney), and Nordstrom. 

If you have a broken button, we’re not going to quibble about button physics or tell you that you shouldn’t have bought a shirt with big, thick, cool-looking buttons. Just bring us the shirt and we’ll replace the buttons at no charge. Ever seen our cache of buttons? You can see part of it in the photo above. There’s a good chance we can match your button or come really, really close.

As for who on earth would research such a thing, all we can say is, should that person ever attend a singles venue, we would encourage putting off saying “I’m a button physicist” until the second or third date. 

How we choose Red Hanger $100 giveaway winners

Many of you have asked how we go about selecting winners in Red Hanger’s monthly $100 giveaway. 

Here’s how. We use randomizing software. It’s the computerized equivalent of writing each entrant’s name on a slip of paper, throwing the slips in a hat, shaking the hat, and having a blindfolded volunteer reach in and draw a name.

Except, it’s better than that. 

Slips of paper, hats and even blindfolded volunteers can be fickle despite the best, most honorable intentions. The software we use is wholly non-fickle. It doesn’t know—and, if it did, wouldn’t care—if you’ve won before, you’re a new or long-standing Red Hanger customer, this is your first or umpteenth entry, or you visit us every day or every decade. Its choice is final and completely out of our control. We couldn’t influence it if we wanted to. OK, maybe if we could if we hacked the randomizing software. But we wouldn’t know how to do that. Even if we wanted to. Which we don’t.