I believe there is still a market for locally produced melamine sweater box racks, at least given the prices some people are still paying for heavier-than-they-suspect plastic racks. I think some people are still willing to pay for slightly heavier racks if they can pick them up locally and save some money.

I assume those are ~12 qt. sterilites and that the rack could also hold ten full sized, ~28 qt. sweater boxes?

Assuming I'm right about the size of the boxes, I would say less than $150 without heat. With heat, I have no idea.

One tip I have if you plan to do this is to pick a plan that is easy to build, uses material efficiently, and is a size that fits into the back of the typical 4-door sedan. If you find such a design you can build jigs for both the cutting of the material and the assembly of the panels and save a significant amount of time. You could easily build two racks per hour. You could even do more but then you'd need the space for a lot of glueups, which is really what can make a lot of woodworking expensive.

Ultimately your customers are paying for your space, time and tooling. How much you want to invest in each is up to you. For local sales of wood/melamine racks I would keep it to a minimum.

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