By Mike Wilson

Thomas Riley Artisans’ Guild officially launched its customizable Closet & Wardrobe Division (download PDF brochure) to the public in early March. This new arm of the ultra-custom woodworking company offers some design standardization, which will open its products to a wider, but still affluent piece of the home organization market, says Matt Riley, who is in charge of client relations at Thomas Riley.

“(The new product lines) are being built for the top 3 to 5 percent of consumers, as opposed to the top 1 percent for our heirloom-quality custom work,” Riley says. “What we’re doing is offering our monumental quality and service in a more streamlined way by creating these designs that are customizable, to a point, to a homeowner’s space."

The Logic line, which starts at $800/lineal foot, is a streamlined open wardrobe system designed for maximum space flexibility, according to the company.

The new division launches with three customizable design lines to capture a variety of tastes and price points, and the company has launched new marketing and manufacturing strategies to distribute the systems. Product offerings include the contemporary Logic line, the European-inspired Nouvel line and the Artisan Collection, which can be made in either classic or transitional style, Riley says. Each of these lines has a different mix of options, allowing consumers to customize the look, finish and functions of each system to fit their needs.

“The Logic System is our most contemporary application,” he says. “It’s available in multiple finishes and veneers and has a very flexible design.”

The Logic line is an open organization system with no doors to hide clothes. The Nouvel line, meanwhile, is a fully closed system that has “a sleek, contemporary design with flat, flush doors,” and features a variety of painted finish and veneer options, Riley says.

The Artisan Collection consists of two different lines — transitional and classic — built using the same platform.

“They’re built using the same construction from a manufacturing standpoint, but each of (the Artisan Collection lines) have different aesthetics,” Riley says. “The classic line is more in the classic or timeless tradition, and features traditional details such as recessed panels and applied mouldings. The transitional line is a blend of classic and contemporary… It has features such as a flat panel as opposed to a recessed panel, or a simple crown.”

The Artisan Collection: Classic, which starts at $2000/lineal foot, is one of the flagship collections by Thomas Riley Artisans' Guild. According to the company, Classic is a real wood, closed door system with raised or recessed panel details, crown molding, and furniture quality finishes. Luxury upgrades and accessories are available.

Thomas Riley came to its design decisions through a mix of market research, input from its design staff and company philosophy.

“We didn’t want to be like another closet company. We wanted to stay away from design trends and wanted to focus more on what our custom clients were personally demanding from us,” Riley says. “We also needed to create enough variety to satisfy contemporary and traditional clients.”

Since the company is attempting to reach a larger market for the customizable products lines, it has taken a more active marketing approach for the new division. Plans call for Thomas Riley to reach out to its network of tradespeople, general contractors and client contacts to kick-start division sales. In the next two to five years, the company intends to start promoting the division heavily to new end-users, Riley says.

“One example of our marketing efforts is the name of the new division,” Riley says. “We decided to name the division the Thomas Riley Artisans’ Guild Closet & Wardrobe Division because the TRAG name, through careful branding over last 10 years, has some leverage. It allows us to leverage branding that has already been done.”

“Our heirloom quality shop establishes our credibility, and customers can see where we’ve come from. We’re coming from building super one-of-a-kind closets to doing something customizable. People know our customizable products will be top quality instead of a company that already makes customizable closets trying to do something better.”

The shop has already installed the new systems in several luxury condominium buildings in New York and south Florida. Thomas Riley installed customizable closets in a model condo, and residents were given the systems as an option after purchasing the condo.

The new division will take orders from developers, builders and architects and directly from customers. The company will use its own installation teams for some jobs and use relationships with local qualified professional installers for others.

If the division’s sales go according to plan, the company plans to open a second 10,000-square-foot manufacturing space, hire more skilled workers and buy machinery, Riley says. He adds that the customizable closets division has been in the works for some time, but the company likes the timing of the division’s launch.

“We had been planning this diversification for two to three years, and now in this time where the economy is correcting itself to normal levels of wealth and expense, the timing couldn’t be better to diversity,” Riley says. “We were fortunate enough to see diversification was key to our future.”