More than 90% of the clothes on display in retail stores are on hangers. Yes there are many elaborate and beautiful store fixtures such as mannequins and mannequin forms, but the clothes hanger is the most basic and fundamental of retail clothing fixtures. For this reason, retailers should pay clothes attention to the types of hangers they use. The customers will notice the clothing hangers, consciously or unconsciously, and they will make a difference in the customer's overall impression of the store.

Each hanger design has a different function. Wire hangers made from metal are the most common of hangers, and they are the cheapest and perhaps most versatile. One major drawback to wire hangers is their damaging tendency to clothing that has not yet dried, leaving nasty rust stains or stretching the stitches. For items that run this risk, plastic or wooden hangers work much better.

For t-shirts and blouses, wire hangers usually work just fine, but they have been known to leave small creases in the fabric. For this reason, most Americans now use large gage plastic hangers for their everyday clothing items. This will cancel the risk of staining while remaining relatively inexpensive plastic hangers are not very expensive.

So far we have discussed the mostly domestic clothes hangers. The retail environment usually uses different hangers for tops than for bottoms. The clothing hangers for tops are usually plastic with a metal hook and formed shoulders. The metal hook is handy for clothing racks, and the shoulders keep shirts and blouses looking good. Some higher end stores actually use wooden or fiberglass hangers with shoulders to really give there clothes a nice form. Almost all pants, skirts, and other bottom garments are hung by clipping hangers. There are many different clipping mechanisms, but they are all used to clip the waste band and allow for the garment to hang freely below. These come in plastic, metal, wood, fiberglass, and just about anything.

More substantial garments like sport jackets, coats, slacks, and suits are usually hung from wooden bodied hangers. Most wooden bodied hangers have a wire or metal hook for the same reason that other retail hangers do. Some wooden hangers have large rounded shoulders and some have a pinch bar that holds slacks in place on the bottom bar. These are expensive hangers often used for the display of fine clothes or suits.

The children's retail world has its own line of hangers. All of these hanger designs also come in children's sizes and in almost any material. Plastic children's hangers often come in multiple colors to help coordinate the store and make things a little more fun. Children's hangers has become a very large industry in the last five years as people spend more money on kid's fashion in general.