American Consumerism Feeds a Storage/Organization Frenzy
THRIVING BUSINESSES EXIST FOR PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZERS, MANUFACTURERS AND DESIGNERS
In1987, the number of shopping centers in the United States surpassed the nation’s tally of high schools, according to statistics collected by EcoFuture, which also reveals that, on average, Americans spend six hours a week shopping. Of that number, only 25 percent of shoppers are seeking a specific item for purchase. What about the other 75 percent? Well, by all accounts, they are looking to buy more “stuff,” which, by the way, seems to be the national obsession. Case in point: www.ecofuture.com cites that in 2002, the U.S. credit card sector claimed $45 billion in total card fees; by 2004, that number soared to more than $60 billion.
What’s good for credit card agencies is a blessing for the storage and organization industry, which is growing in leaps in bounds, mirroring the national obsession with material goods. As Americans accumulate more belongings, they need more places to put them. But just tossing something into a closet, garage or drawer may mean they’ll never see it again, or worse, they’ll spend countless precious moments trying to find it, cursing all the way. Enter the professional organizer, along with storage systems to meet every need, whim and area in the home as well as the office.
FILLING A NEED
“People have more to organize then ever before,” explains Barry Izsak, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). “They have more time constraints than ever imagined, along with to-do lists that continually grow. Consumers are blasted incessantly by the air and print media to go out and get more stuff. With more disposable income than ever before, they do just that . . . until they are buried and drowning in stuff.”
NAPO was founded in 1985 by a group of aspiring professional organizers who foresaw a growing need for consumers to tame their wild lives and reckless ownership of everything one could possibly imagine. The group slowly tallied a membership of 1,000 by 1998, a number that has ballooned to include 3,400 members in 2005, says Izsak, who adds that the organization includes 22 regional chapters, sprouting three new chapters a year, and forecasts membership to swell to 5,000 by 2007. (See “Organized Organizers.”)
Of those 3,400 current members are many entrepreneurs who have gotten into the industry in plenty of time to enjoy a sumptuous piece of the pie.
Business is admittedly good for Izsak, who serves his NAPO presidency glowingly along with operating his own business, Arranging It All (www.arrangingitall.com), from his home base of Austin, Texas. In addition to these two time-consuming tasks, Izsak has authored a book, “Organizing Your Garage in No Time,” addressing the needs of consumers, and adding to the success of the organizing marketplace today.
“My business continues to grow,” he reports. “For a successful professional organizer, this doesn’t mean a $20,000 to $30,000-a-year income. There are many successful professional organizers who are earning a six-figure income.”
ORGANIZING AN ORGANIZING CAREER
While the career choice of professional organizer may seem to some like a walk in the park, Izsak cautions it’s not as easy as it may seem. “Many people think that, like any business, they can get into professional organizing without any trouble,” he begins. “The model used to be that you could just hang out a shingle to start your own business. But there are lots of skills and savvy involved in becoming a successful professional organizer.”
For Maria Gracia, it took skill, savvy and a vision to recognize that professional organizing might grow into a comfortable start-up business for her. After 10 years commuting to New York City from New Jersey and working as a marketing, organizing and management specialist at Dun and Bradstreet’s Nielsen Media Research, Gracia was looking for a homespun career that could bank on her organizing skills. “Organizing was always my strongpoint, so I did a little research and just went from there,” she explains. “I knew I could do something with it.”
It was within a few days of Gracia’s initial research in 1996 that Get Organized Now was founded, and that “something” has continued to evolve into a great business ever since. Gracia’s humble first assignments were earned by visiting local businesses, organizing filing systems for free. Word-of-mouth by those clients spun into several more assignments. In addition, a friend invited her to host a presentation in a large office setting, which evolved into more one-on-one assignments.
Through her Web site, www.getorganized.com, Gracia reaches a multitude of anxious, unorganized people seeking unencumbered homes and offices. The site receives more than a million unique visits a year; a newsletter — authored by Gracia — circulates to a list of 160,000; and a new blog that offers a “real personalized approach” to organizing premiered July 15, garnering a whopping 26,000 hits within two weeks.
Over time, Gracia, who now lives in Watertown, Wis., weaned herself from the typical professional-organizing career of serving individual clients on a daily basis, and has created a line of products that is gobbled up by consumers at a tune of 200 sales a week. Included are numerous books and planner “toolkits” for wannabe organizers, such as “Finally Organized, Finally Free,” “Ultimate Guide for Professional Organizers,” “Easy Organizer” and “Give to Get Marketing Solution.” The ever-clever Gracia also sells TuffBaggs, weather-resistant handbags and totebags designed by Kate Lozier to compartmentalize and organize everything needed for a walk around the park or a trip to Honolulu.
Once the books became available online in 1998 in addition to the printed versions, business boomed, says Gracia, who now grosses $350,000 a year, retaining a 60 percent profit. “There is a huge market out there,” says Gracia. “I cannot even begin to tell you ... it has just absolutely exploded. I never thought that we’d be doing this well, but we are really doing great.”
For those catching the entrepreneurial bug and hoping to charge into business, Gracia recommends some basic advice. “First of all, don’t spend a lot of money in the beginning,” she advises. “You don’t need an office, and you can start small. But you have to be smart about marketing. If you can’t reach clients, you can’t do business with them. Also, keep in touch with other professional organizers and keep up with the latest products.”
MATCHING CONSUMER NEEDS WITH NICHE MARKETS
While thousands of professional organizers are already in the marketplace, Gracia says there’s still plenty of work to keep people busy, particularly if one specializes in a niche that nobody else is covering. Areas that have attracted other organizers include closets, offices, basements, garages, memories (helping someone organize photos and memorabilia, such as letters), kitchens and laundry areas.
A little imagination can take a professional organizer on an unlimited amount of sideline assignments, which may or may not end up becoming their specialty. “I know someone who works directly with the real estate market,” Gracia says. “This person goes in and does home staging — getting homes ready for resale.”
After teaching at the elementary school level for 14 years and exploring other career options, Denise Landers has found herself making a comfortable and rewarding living in the organization industry as well. She spent six month’s time researching a variety of career choices before realizing that her skills were likely a perfect match for a professional organizer.
“For eight years, I had been keeping a personal file and slipping articles that I found of interest into it,” Landers recalls. “When I found that file, I realized that every article I had saved had to do with organizing, including topics on everything from party planning to the National Association of Professional Organizers. I began to think I should read the writing on the wall, that I was very interested in this field, and I went from there.”
Having been a teacher for more than a decade, Landers’ skills in educating others and keeping everything organized were polished. These experiences served her well, but also gave her a bit of a surprise.
“I taught for so many years, but it’s really hard to see if you are making a difference in a child’s life,” she says. “In teaching, there never really is closure. The results of your efforts may not even be observable for six years down the road.
“When I would finish working with someone one-on-one in this business, though, by the end of the day, I could already see a huge change in their lives,” Landers continues. “Clients could see a before-and-after photo in the same day. And, at the end of the day, they would say, ‘Wow! I can’t believe it.’ They love me and I feel really good about what I have done for them. It’s really rewarding.”
Six years into this line of work and grossing more than $100,000 a year, Landers says she is loving her decision to enter this field more than ever. “I’m still excited about it. Every year it changes . . . and I had no clue business would be this good.”
When asked what newcomers to the industry should expect, Landers would remind them that there are numerous niches, and oftentimes a first-timer assumes “they are just going to do it all, all the different areas of organizing.” Eventually, though, a niche can be found — matching the professional organizer’s skills with a certain sect of the market.
Landers gradually began to find her own niche. Having been in the business for six years and operating an attractive and user-friendly Web site (www.keyorganization.com), her journey has led into the wide-open field of office organization. She graduated herself from a primary business of one-on-one client calls, to teaching classes at a local community college, to conducting training sessions and seminars.
The interest in her work has earned her national recognition outside of her home state of Texas: The IRS requested her for a half-day training session in Cincinnati, and she also has received contracted work from the Tennessee Department of Revenue.
Landers has also created her own title to identify her niche more clearly. “I am a Productivity Trainer and Organizing Specialist,” she claims. “I work with businesses, conduct corporate training and help with departmental workflow.” A lot of what this means, according to Landers, is knowing what, how and when to do something with the paper flow in the office setting.
According to statistics on Landers’ Web site, there are many reasons — primarily addressing time, money and space concerns — that dictate better paper organization at the corporate level and even in a home office:
- The average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year retrieving misplaced information on desks or in files. At a salary of $75,000 per year, this would translate to 12.3 percent of total earnings.
- Ninety percent of all documents handled each day are merely shuffled.
- It costs $120 in labor to track down a misplaced document or $250 to recreate it.
- More than 800 million pages are created from computer printouts per day, enough to fill a file drawer 225 miles long.
- Despite visions of a paperless office, 80 percent to 90 percent of all information in the average office is still maintained on paper.
- Eighty percent of filed papers are never referenced again; 50 percent of all filed materials are duplicates or expired information.
- In every survey taken during the last 20 years, managing paperwork falls in the top 10 time-wasting activities of managers.
- Workgroups lose 15 percent of all documents they handle and spend 30 percent of their time trying to find lost documents; plus, 7.5 percent of all documents get lost completely.
- Americans as a whole waste more than nine million hours each day looking for lost and misplaced articles, amounting to a national loss of nearly $150 million per day.
HOT SPOTS AND MORE NICHES
The home office has definitely been a hot area of growth for the professional organizer, as noted by Landers, as well as Susan Dubal, marketing director at the Phoenix corporate headquarters of Classy Closets, a 20-year-old company that professes to “have designed storage solutions for thousands of homes and businesses across the United States.”
“Closet storage continues to be the largest part of our business, but home office has begun to make a mark as well,” Dubal says. Classy Closets was founded by Jeff Curtis, who in 1984 began operations in his home in Tempe, Ariz.
Today, Classy Closets owns and operates seven showrooms and three production facilities in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada, employing more than 200 people as designers and installers, in manufacturing and other skilled positions.
Among the latest trends in the closet sect, Dubal says, is a preference by many consumers for a custom-made wardrobe in lieu of or in addition to closet space already existing in the home.
“These are more than a closet,” begins Dubal. “They are custom-designed and built to be installed along a wall in a home. They protrude from the wall, much like a cabinet, but they look more like a beautiful piece of furniture and offer more of a European look.”
The wardrobes, though popular for closet storage, are also designed to meet the needs of the home office, media centers, bookcases, or even in the garage or utility area.
“The hardest part for people who want some type of organization in their homes is that they don’t have a structure or system in place,” explains Chris Johnson, who oversees 18 designers in the Phoenix office of Classy Closets. “They typically have a closet that has a rod and a shelf. Things get piled on the shelf or the floor.” Eventually this leads to an organizational disaster, but with the help of designers, the mess can be cleaned up in as little as a day.
“We can take that closet with only a shelf and a rod, extend the shelf space to 20 linear feet, add a couple extra feet of rod space, and allow the closet to become organized,” says Johnson.
From there, he notes, the homeowner may need a little help to get over hurdle number two. “Hurdle number one is just getting an infrastructure into place, which is what Classy Closets can do. The second challenge is getting functionally organized.”
For the homeowner who has difficulty sorting through the mess and categorizing on what shelf an item should reside, or what to throw out or put elsewhere, professional organizers can be hired to come to the rescue.
From the design, manufacture and install perspective, business continues to run full throttle, especially for Classy Closets. Whereas the retail side of operations was doing about $680,000 of business a month last year in the Phoenix area alone, Johnson says that number is closer to $900,000 a month . . . and shows no signs of slowing.
Asked if there were any other trends worth noting about the storage and organization industry, he responds, “The trend is that people have come to the realization that they need something. TV shows [such as Clean Sweep and Mission Organization] have been a great thing for this industry. It shows viewers many success stories, and they say ‘I can do this too.’”
Izsak notes, “The biggest reason for the popularity of organizing is that people have to do more in less time. People are struggling with this, and the need for professional organizers continues to grow. It’s similar to the proliferation of weight-loss and fitness centers. These businesses don’t slow down. They are dealing with a human condition,” he concludes. “Professional organizing is also dealing with a human condition — one that just doesn’t go away.”
ORGANIZED ORGANIZERS
The National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) is the premier national association dedicated to the field of organizing. Formed in 1985 as a not-for-profit professional association, NAPO is dedicated to sharing information about the growing organizing industry, its trends, and its concerns. The group works to define and set standards for the organizing profession. Members include organizing consultants, speakers, trainers, authors and manufacturers of organizing products.
A modest annual membership fee promises entrepreneurs numerous educational opportunities, networking, the ability to stay abreast of new advances in the industry, and a Web site referral system that puts consumers in touch with regional professional organizers throughout the country.
In addition, according to Barry Izsak, president, NAPO offers the industry’s largest annual conference of professional organizers — which drew more than 800 professional organizers to San Diego this past spring — and the association is planning to offer a certification program to be launched in 2007.
Winding up this year’s educational opportunities is an “Introduction to Professional Organizing,” tele-class hosted on two separate dates: Oct. 27 and Nov. 15. The class, for aspiring professional organizers, reviews the history of the industry and provides an overview of the professional organizer career.
For more information about educational opportunities and membership, contact NAPO Headquarters, 847.375.4746, hq@napo.net, or visit the organization’s Web site at www.napo.net.
