Expert Advice from Steve Maxwell
"You can tell a lot about a society by the quality of indoor clothes drying racks it sells.
"When you have a population seriously committed to household conservation and efficiency, you'll find excellent drying racks in stores everywhere. But when you've got a society that's largely ignorant of the hidden costs of running every wet article of clothing through a power-gobbling dryer, you'll find stores littered with $1.98 drying racks that bend, break and collapse. ...
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"But if availability of high-quality drying racks is any indication, perhaps our home-grown addiction to dryer over-use may finally be breaking. I'm pinning my hopes on a new-to-Canada line of Swiss made drying racks that have been quietly refined and perfected in the land of the Alps for the last 55 years.They're impressive, effective and promise to bring a whole new level of legitimacy to the practice of indoor clothes drying.
"The brand is called Stewi (1-888-763-5928, www.stenicproducts.com) and you'll find these drying racks in hotels, homes and institutions all across Europe. Stewis are undisuptably the very best drying racks in the world, and when you properly consider what they deliver, the prices are surprisingly good too." [emphasis added]
Read the full Toronto Star article
Patricia Treble
"Three years ago, Paul Gay noticed that customers visiting the website of his family's mailbox and equipment business were buying a lot of old-fashioned clotheslines. So he took over that part of the firm and opened the ClothesLine Shop in South China, Maine. Soon the part-time venture got so big he quit his post office job. Today he sells a seemingly infinite variety of indoor and outdoor drying rack equipment ranging from more than 30 styles of racks to basic pulley clothesline systems.
"For Gay's customers saving money is the hands-down reason for buying the equipment. According to Natural Resources Canada, even with energy-saving technology, the average dryer still sucked up about 900 kilowatt, or around $100 worth, of electricity in 2005. For bigger families, the cost can easily double or triple.
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"For thos craving even more drying room, Gay offers the "Cadillac of clotheslines," Swiss-made products from a European firm called Stewi AG that has been in the laundry-equipment business for 61 years. It's aluminum frames, engineered to be lightweight yet sturdy, can hold an enormous amount of wet clothes and still fold away neatly for storage. [emphasis added] The North American distributor, Michael Basman of Thornhill, Ont.-based Stenic Products, noticed the trend back to air drying, and in November 2005 left his full-time retail job to become Stewi's rep.