Hannah Miller - Issue Date: CLOSETS October 2007
Posted On: 10/10/2007

A Closet Case moved into a prime retail location and sales increased substantially.

When Colleen Adams was looking for new showroom space for her growing closet company, her real-estate broker husband found it for her. It was on a main thoroughfare in the town center of Daniel Island, an area of exclusive homes outside Charleston, SC.

"Such wonderful exposure, right in the middle of downtown Daniel Island," says Adams, who moved A Closet Case into the former women's clothing boutique in April. The "pedestrian-friendly, kid-friendly" center encourages foot traffic past her store. And her wide plate glass window, flanked by flowers and greenery, invites the strollers to come inside.

"I never thought people would walk in and buy closets, but they do," Adams says. "This has been such a boon to our business." Monthly sales have increased 20 percent, she estimates, with the increase coming in renovations rather than new construction.

Not only people are welcome. Adams often brings one of her three Labrador retrievers to the showroom, and she has placed a water dish on the sidewalk outside. Summers on the South Carolina coast can be brutally hot and, she says, "I wanted to make sure that if people were out walking their dogs, they can get some water." Might grateful dog owners become customers? "We can only hope," she laughs.

There was one potential flaw in this relaxed Eden. The showroom is only 420 square feet. But Adams, who believes in making something out of nothing, had an answer. She arranged mini-displays around the walls: kids' room, mudroom, pantry, garage, office wall unit, and basic hanging and drawer arrangements. "It's like a food tasting; we want to give everybody a little sample of what we do," she says. She uses the wall unit as her office and confers with customers around a freestanding dark melamine island with granite top.

A Closet Case's average sale went up 15 percent after the showroom debuted, Adams says. She expects business to increase as an entertainment complex with restaurants and a movie theater goes up across the street. She already is next door to a spa, which pipes music into her showroom.

Adams was pushed by husband Rick into moving into the showroom. She had been working out of an 80-square-foot showroom/office in a Mount Pleasant, SC, warehouse owned by Chris Cobb of Cobb Woodworking. She only had room for an 8-by-12 wall unit and a storage cabinet there, and she was using a boxcar container in the yard as a warehouse. Whenever she wanted to show her work, she had to call up a friend for whom she had done a closet and invite herself and the prospective customer over.

"Maybe it's time for you to grow up, literally get out of the closet," her husband said.

Now, prospects can come in the showroom and not only see the system components but also handle them, she says. "They can touch and play with everything that can possibly go in their closet." And they do, she adds. She has to keep everything extra-clean. "People are opening the drawers all the time," she says.

Special touches complement the basics

What customers see at A Closet Case are storage solutions based on ProClosets systems, but benefiting from Adams' special touch. One example is the "kiddie corner," where an ivory melamine bench/chest stores toys for visiting children to play with. The doors are hand-painted with pictures of a cavorting whale, fish and turtle, an idea that came from Adams' son, Jake, 10. She was pondering, "What can we do to make the showroom really special?" she recalls. He said, "Why don't you do painted doors?"

Whenever a customer orders the painted doors, Adams sends the basic melamine case to New Jersey artist Jackie D'Amico, a sister of A Closet Case sales agent/designer Missy Mazzarella.

Besides Adams, the closet company has three full-time employees, Mazzarella and installers Eugene Busche and Tom Beyhan. Part-time assistant Kelly Buckley manages the showroom two days a week while Adams and Mazzarella are out in the field.

In another display, a corner pantry/bar holds birch dovetailed drawer boxes, baskets and spice racks on full-extension glides. "Works well with those cans of tomatoes," Adams says. The display gives Adams a chance to demonstrate radius shelving, which is one of the hardest concepts for the public to grasp, she says. The assembly also holds a mini-refrigerator, from which the women serve visitors. "We always have wine. We always have beer," Adams says.

"This is a very social closet company," she adds. "Missy and I are both Italian. We're going to make sure people have something to eat in our space, our house." Her son, she says, rides his bike to the showroom and brings his friends in for snacks.

The main display area is the rear wall, which holds both a garage cabinet and a long unit of shelves and cabinets designed to display a range of amenities. Customers can pull out the sliding tie racks, operate the mechanism that lowers top-tier clothing racks, and open the seeded glass doors. A Closet Case custom-orders the doors and has the glass cut by a local vendor for people who don't want their stored objects on constant view.

In the center of the room, a dark melamine island with a granite top doubles as a desk when chatting with customers. The usual procedure, Adams says, is for customers to make an introductory phone call to the company. Then she or Mazzarella take preliminary measurements. Then the customers are encouraged to visit the showroom.

A Closet Case does the full range of storage options - pantries, closets, home offices, entertainment centers and garages, with garages accounting for about 10 percent of the work. Adams adds wood trim to some projects, but turns to woodworker Cobb for a complicated rope pattern that she says is popular in the Charleston area. Her main product is melamine shelves and cases from ProClosets. "I don't vary from it a whole lot," she says. White, ivory and cherry are top sellers. She sells a lot of granite and stone tops, which she buys locally.

Adams has the melamine cut to fit by ProClosets, which also supplies most hardware. When customers want special hardware, like hand-painted knobs or leather and polished-metal drawer pulls, she orders them through a local vendor. The installers, who work in a 60-mile radius of the showroom, carry tools for making adjustments on the job.

Adams entered the closet business five years ago. She and her husband had moved to Daniel Island from Chapel Hill, NC, where she had built homes as Lucci Design Build. ("Lucci" means "little" in Italian, she says.) Someone gave her husband a small closet system. He said, "Why don't you retrofit this into my closet?"

She did and was thrilled to discover, "Omigosh, I can do this. This is fun," she says. Closet design offered a way to use her building experience, yet seemed flexible enough that she could take part in son Jake's activities. "I wanted to get the job done, get customers 100 percent satisfied, and move on," she says. Building a home takes a year or more, she notes, whereas at A Closet Case, "We virtually design the closet and install it in a week's time."

She started calling on builders. "I know how to talk construction talk: 'I won't ever keep you waiting,'" she says. Now half her clients are referred by some 25 builders, the other half are people wanting renovations, she says. "A lot of people are pulling out old closets. People want to get rid of the wire shelving."

In addition to serving Daniel Island, A Closet Case installs systems on other resort islands around Charleston, including Kiawah and Seabrook, and in Charleston and Mount Pleasant. Home values range from $250,000 up to $6 million.

Jobs that require extensive woodworking, like "some complicated built-in for a house," Adams refers to Cobb. When he thinks a prospective job is more in her line than his, he recommends her.

Living and working on the island for six years, she has found a number of acquaintances, and the pleasures of that go beyond business, she says. She tells of a recent garage job she did. A friend wanted to surprise her husband for Father's Day. So A Closet Case installed a garage system while the family was on vacation. "We put everything back in the cabinets and put a big bow around it. And when he walked in the door, it was waiting for him."

"On a small island, you get to know everybody and can be a part of their family surprises," she says.