IronHold

Dry cleaners are great and a convenient place to leave your clothes to get them ironed and polished for work or a big interview. However, sometimes we forget to take our clothes to the dry cleaners or pick them up, or sometimes last minutes interviews are given after 5 o clock for the next day leaving no time to take clothes to the drycleaners because it is closed. There is no other choice but to iron them ourselves. There is nothing worse than to go to an interview or work with clothes badly ironed because it shows a lack of effort and more likely than not few of us are masters of ironing.
My business idea is called the “IronHold,” which are six clamps that hold whatever is being ironed still so that the pants, skirts, shirts, etc. will not move or have a double crease from ironing. The idea is that there are four main clamps that hold that garment in place. Each principal clamp will be six inches long and an inch and a half thick. This way it will prevent the clamp from wrinkling the shirts since it is so long and applies pressure evenly. The side that holds the garment in place will have a cloth like material to prevent wrinkling but will be made of metal and plastic on the outside, with a coil that allows for good grip on an ironing board. The extra two clamps will be half the length, the same width, and the purpose for these two clamps is so that once when the shirt is ironed with the principal clamps on, then to iron where the clamps are the two smaller clamps will be place on both sides of each principal clamp so that the principal clamp can be taken off and allow for the iron to go through that area where principal clamp was. This can then be done for each principal clamp one by one.
This product would be directed to working professionals and household mothers who iron themselves or do not like or have time to take their clothes to the drycleaners. Many mothers or stay at home parents would find this tool very useful and helpful because it is frustrating spending so much time on ironing because the clothes shifts when ironing. In addition to that, some individuals do not like spending money on having all of their clothes dry-cleaned because after some time an expense of $15-$20 a week adds up. In addition to that, if an individual has to dress up every once and awhile and finds no need to spend $10 on dry cleaning and then having to drop off as well as pick it up it is a time saver. Not to mention the fact that sometimes dry cleaning is not done on time, clothing is lost, and if you lose your order slip to pick it up it is difficult to get that clothing back or next to impossible.
Right now the main competition would be another type of clamp that goes across the whole garment on an ironing board; however, it seems more difficult to use than useful and appears to only be useful for dress pants. This product has to constantly be removed and readjusted which seems to defeat the purpose of trying to reduce any difficulty in ironing and trying to make it easier for the consumer. I think that the market share for this type of product would be profitable and I know that dry-cleaning another competition in ironing but in Walmart alone the prices for clothing irons themselves sell for $15-$50 dollars. So it is quite profitable. My product would be cheap and inexpensive to produce. It would be sold for $25 dollars per six-pack, I did have someone say that they would be willing to spend a max of $35 but right now the other similar product sells for about $20 and it is just one. It is cheap and affordable, does not take up space, easy to use, and would reduce time spent on ironing. Since this product is new and unlike anything so far it is hard to price but a regular plastic alligator clamp cost 20-70 cents per clamp from a Shanghai clamp manufacturer and for our design let’s say it would cost an extra $2 dollars for clamp design speciation’s. In addition to that let us assume that we have to ship these clamps at a rate of $2 per clamp from Shanghai and order at least 5000 clamps per shipment. Our profitability margins would still be large and most of these expenses are a little over priced but for the sake of showing worst case scenario if these products did have an expense this high it would still be quiet profitable. The mark up would be more a little more than $20 dollars per clamp pack so once here in the U.S. storage and shipping expenses would be easily covered.