When Closets & Organized Storage asked me to submit an article themed: Luxury & Bespoke Closet Experiences, I had to look up ‘Bespoke’ to get an accurate definition. Bespoke: Custom-built, made for a particular customer or user, something that is ordered before it is made. Bespoke has enjoyed a spike in usage in recent years, perhaps due to consumer trends that champion all things artisanal over those that are prefab.

Custom closets have been ‘bespoke’ since Neil Balter, creator of California Closets, created his first closet job in 1979. Closet Institute of America (CIA) recently released Neil’s closet journey testimonial in a video reproduction of his keynote address from last October’s Closet Summit (closetinstitute.org/closet-summit) in Nashville.

As Neil described it, he arrived at his first install with full 4x8 sheets of unfinished particleboard, threw them onto his portable table saw in the client’s driveway and cut everything on site. The finished product had no edgebanding, no molding trim, and he didn’t even sand the leading edge. I guess beauty is in the eye of the ‘bespoker.’

I didn’t do much better in 1984 when I cut my first job on my Shop-Smith 5-in-1 multi-purpose machine, more like a woodworker’s ‘toy,’ but I did use white melamine. Adjustability was accomplished with KV metal pilaster strips with accompanying shelf clips and rod holders. I had not yet discovered the 32mm system that was developed in Germany in 1945. Can you say, “Bespoke 2.0”?

Mike Carson, creator of NCG, and ACSP, painted his particleboard white, until someone told him: “Hey Mike, you know you can buy these sheets with the white stuff already on them?” This industry was getting more “bespoken’ with every job.

In my early years, I offered three ‘flavors’: white, white and white. By 1988, I out-bespoke myself by adding antique white and an ugly-looking imitation woodgrain called Hardrock Maple. I was moving right up the bespoke food chain. By early 1990’s, woodgrains had gotten popular. We even had a local builder come to our new showroom, inspect our Wild Apple display, and asked: “So, you also do real wood, huh?” Bespoke was certainly on the ascent.

For the next decade, woodgrains dominated the industry. However, the color match between sheetgoods, edgebanding and thermofoil was horrible. At the 2015 Closet Summit, we held a panel with vendors from these three disciplines and had a testy Q&A with attendees. It worked because color matches started to get better. 

In 2015, we incorporated LED lighting into every display for the Closet Summit showroom tour in Savannah. At first, I questioned my Hafele rep’s suggestion. “My installers are woodworkers, not electricians.” His reply, “Can they plug in an extension cord?”  By Closet Summit #11 in Charlotte in 2023, our data showed the average closet sale amongst our group had climbed from $1600 in 2014 (the first Summit) to now $7500. Covid and beyond have been banner years for our industry. Inflation and interest rates kept homeowners from moving up, so they stayed put, and couples bespoke to each other about upgraded closets and storage.

We have even had some of our CIA members change their names to Bespoke Closets. That’s about it. The CIA Director has bespoken.