Business structure for a clothing closet

We sought how to structure the clothing closet properly and found that having a clear organizational and operational system in place—such as defined roles, inventory management, and clear communication—massively benefits both the customers and the workers. This shows how having this structure and additional organizational guidelines in place allows each customer to see each of the products available, saving a long process of having to go and try different things on.

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Each organization should be able to strategically decide best practices based on ease of access, scale of organization, and general context. According to Pam Teich, “One important rule is to have one person in charge of donation requests. If you have several shops and several managers, the left hand definitely does not know what the right hand is doing regarding donations” (p. 1). By having a clear hierarchy in place, it is much clearer what each person in each role’s responsibilities are and the height of what they can and can’t do. In the case of Hire Attire, their scale is much smaller both in terms of size and in access to resources. 

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When adopting ideas like different inventory management strategies, Hire Attire will first need to devote a lot of time to tracking their backlog of current inventory as soon as possible. This is because the size of the client means logging all of their current inventory will take a while, and if not dealt with soon, the issue will only continue to compile. The nature of the structure being that it’s largely student volunteers also means that it’s unlike other businesses in the sense that the management figure may not be as readily available. 

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To offset this, Hire Attire can create protocols that are more accommodating in terms of what sort of permissions and access each individual worker is given. One thing in their favor, though, is that, as seen below, similar clothing closets at other colleges around the country share a similar amount of scale in terms of workforce, meaning that Hire Attire is on par with other university closets.

 

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This is beneficial to the employees themselves as it makes their job much easier; however, at the same time, if the workers are working at maximum efficiency, in turn, the customer benefits too.

 

Enforcing such a structure has the following benefits:

- Having a clear hierarchy in which each worker has a clear role, with a clear management figure, will make tracking donations much easier.

- Hierarchy brings efficiency.

- A centralized approach like this gives the organization a lot more professionalism, potentially drawing more donors.

- Easier access for customers

 

Tinker Massey also believes that for the process of accepting donations, clear guidelines for both the donor and the organization should be in place, saying, “It is necessary for the institution to have specific guidelines in place before receiving such materials. Such a concept would benefit Hire Attire, as it is normal to have a contract available that explains all of the aspects of the giving and receiving” (p. 1). By giving your donors clear guidelines, it makes the process much easier for them too, and there are no issues with people potentially trying to donate things the closet doesn’t accept. For Hire Attire specifically, the general lack of organization is one of the biggest issues holding them back, so any sort of structure and putting good systems in place is beneficial. Such examples of guidelines would be the following: only accepting professional clothing, the clothing must be of a certain quality, clothing must be clean, and clothing must be delivered officially, not just dropped off and left. Despite these guidelines that may be considered obvious or even exist in the minds of workers, writing them out and making them official adds legitimacy and professionalism.

 

A website/QR codes

We wanted to find a way to make use of this structure and take advantage of the structure we put in place. We found that by using a website and QR codes, we can track inventory much easier. This shows how looking at other strategies that similar organizations use, varying from other clothing closets to charity libraries, we were able to gauge some of the best practices that these organizations use to sort their products and make it clear what is available.

 

We found that the current way the clothing closet does things isn’t effective; not properly logging things can cause confusion and general issues. The fix to this issue that we found in our research is the use of QR codes. By using QR codes, you’re able to not only log each item but also provide images for each piece of clothing for the customer to see. For this to be done, it’s very simple; there are a variety of free QR code-generating websites and apps. Therefore, when a new item is donated, all that is needed to be done is to create a new QR code, take a good photo of the image, input that into the code and then it should be done as simple as that.

 

Uniqode, in one of their blogs, discussed the benefits, saying, “QR codes can carry a much larger amount of data than barcodes, which in turn also helps in higher rates of customer engagement as consumers can access data about sustainability, product information, etc.”

 

Leadership

With this structure and way of implementing it, we wanted to know how to set it in motion completely. We found that having clear leadership and management allows the organization to be successful, especially during times of change. By this we mean that there should be a clear leadership structure, a clear hierarchy in place that makes it clear what each person’s roles are in the organization depending on their place in the organization.

 

Even with leadership in place, we found that there should be very clear lines drawn. This shows how leadership like this allows everything to run smoothly; accurately strategizing the right way of doing things and having the authority to do it improves the likelihood of organizational success. We wanted to know how to create a work environment and structure that was a lot more structured and unified. We found that having proper management in place works to create an idea of accountability and teamwork that goes a long way in an organization working.

 

Wanza (2024) discusses this, explaining that "when executives/leaders are the primary influencers of behavior, values, and performance at a non-profit, it is imperative to ensure that they focus on communication, relationship development, capacity building, and open dialogue."

 

The recommendations provided in this analysis match not only the needs of the client but are also completely feasible within the scale of the organization Hire Attire. Both of them are designed with the idea of order and structure, allowing work for employees to be easier, as well as the process of donating too.