Bob's Blog Archive December 22, 2008 It’s time for the year end blog. I’ve gotten a lot of nice feedback on Bob’s Blog and I’m glad I started blogging in June. This blog is overdue. I haven’t had the motivation to blog lately. All the news I read is so depressing. As a business owner, I see a lot of good things going on. I know there are companies making money. But, I never read about them, or hear about them on the news. Sometimes I feel guilty talking about good things. I feel like the media wants us to believe the sky is falling. It’s probably the only way they can sell papers, or get high ratings. But I don’t need high ratings and I don’t need to sell any news papers, so I can blog about anything good that I want to. My friend Steve gave me his Departures Magazine (the September issue) and wanted me to see the article by Elisabeth Franck-Dumas titled “Does Anyone Still Wear A Hat?”. The writer talks about her great experience shopping for a hat in a shop in Paris called Marie Mercie’. The article brought me back full circle to my first blog about who wears and who doesn’t wear hats. But that’s not the reason for this blog. The point of this blog is that hats are featured in yet another fashion magazine with a lot of photos and fanfare. So if you want to find good things in the hat business, one of the best is – way more exposure. The question that I am getting most frequent from my friends in the industry is will Barack Obama wear a hat to his inauguration. I’m guessing he will, but I don’t know him. We’ll find out in a few weeks. Will it make a difference in hat sales next year if he wears one or not? You bet it will. If JFK is blamed for killing the hat industry by not wearing a hat at his inauguration, what will they say about this one? I’ll blog about that later, if in fact it is warranted. I’m guessing he would look great in a 2 ½” pinch front hat with a snap brim and a raw edge. Stay tuned. I was in the Forum Shops in Vegas last month and saw the most terrific display of hats in the window of John Varvatos (A better men’s store). From across the mall you could see dozens of hats hanging like marionettes at all different heights and angles. There were Top Hats, Derbies, and Fedoras “dancing” all over the place. Talk about exposure. From the looks of it, you would have thought it was a hat store. I was so impressed I had my wife take a picture with her phone (which I’ll put up on the blog). Well, it turns out that the store didn’t sell hats. I asked the manager why such a great hat window and no hats in the store. He told me he has had customers ask if they could buy one of the hats from the window and had to tell them that they were for display only. Go figure. The recent wrath of cold weather across much of the country has been great for hat sales. Sometimes in fashion we forget about function. I dare anyone to shovel snow from the drive and not wear a hat. It is mandatory and I love it. I wore my fur trooper to the Ohio State/Michigan game last month. I got a lot of compliments. Troopers are fashion this year. But that’s not the reason I wore it. It was 30 degrees and I was outside for 6 hours, and I stayed warm! So we close the year with some good news. Hats are selling. It is cold as heck outside (How come nobody is talking about global warming this year?) and many places will have a White Christmas. Hats are featured in many fashion pages as an important accessory and retailers are starting to take notice. I’m not saying 2009 is going to be an easy year by any means. I’m just saying things aren’t always as bad as we are lead to believe by the media - at least not in the hat world. Have a happy New Year and we’ll update again after the inauguration. Bob
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