Custom Closets Without the Custom Overhead
Yisrael Kleinman of The Cuttery
A closet stops working gradually. Clothes pile up. Then the quote comes in at $1,500, and the question follows: why do shelves cost as much as appliances?
The cost isn’t the materials. It’s the measuring, redesigns, installation, and the callbacks that come when something doesn’t fit.
“That’s where people get stuck,” Yisrael Kleinman said. “They want something custom… they just don’t want everything around it that makes it expensive.”
Yisrael runs Clearbrook Builders, a construction company in New Jersey. He bought the CNC machine originally for his own projects. When a friend asked if he could cut pieces for him, Yisrael quoted $100 a sheet. That became The Cuttery.
The Cuttery doesn’t measure, install, or deliver by default. Customers design their layouts with help from the company’s programming team, have the components precision-cut, and either install them themselves or hire their own installer.
The design happens during a Zoom session. Layouts are built in real time using Mosaic, a 3D cabinetry program that adjusts shelves, drawers, and hanging space on screen. Once finalized, the system calculates material needs and prepares the cutting files.
“In fifteen minutes, we can lay out an entire room,” Yisrael said.
The components are cut on a CNC machine, drilled for connector holes, and labeled to show where each piece goes. What arrives is a precision-cut kit, ready to assemble. A standard three-section closet with drawers runs $1,200 to $1,600 from most installers. From The Cuttery, it’s $600 to $700.
Most of the work is residential closets. Builders and custom closet companies also use The Cuttery as a backend manufacturer — designing with their clients and outsourcing production.
Yisrael is also a licensed social worker. One principle he carries over from therapy to business: take customer preferences seriously, even when they seem unusual.
“Everybody makes sense,” he said. “People have their reasons for wanting things a certain way.”
This was The Cuttery’s first year exhibiting at OJBA. Yisrael had attended many times as a contractor. This time, he came with a product visitors immediately recognized.
“There are two kinds of people… people with custom closets… and people whose wives are angry at them,” he said jokingly….
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