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clients had a demand for other materials, like sinamay, so Plooij senior included this in his range. After Dennis, who previously worked as an export agent at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, joined his parents’ business in 2010, he started to import sinamay directly from the Philippines. As they now sold summer materials besides felt, they became an interesting partner for factories of straw hats too, which offered them to also buy their leftover stocks. Dennis sources his materials within Europe and always visits the factories himself to judge the qualities of the stocks on offer. The conditions in which materials have been kept (light, temperature, humidity) determine whether they still hold any commercial value. Over the years, he has built a network of trusted relationships with different companies, making him the only business in Europe to recycle millinery materials on this scale, and for very affordable prices. Dennis enjoys the chance of meeting his customers at events like the Dutch Hat Day, Les Estivales du Chapeau de Caussade or the Barcelona Hat Days; the atmosphere, he says, is much more relaxed and less competitive than in his former work environment. He also travels to Indonesia every two years to meet his clients there. Plooij Hats and Materials, as it
is today, is built on three pillars: new millinery materials; ‘second choice’ felt hat bodies (with, for instance, a slight colour deviation, weak spots or other minor defects); and the export of hats and felts to Indonesia. New materials and the export to Indonesia both represent about thirty per cent of the company’s turnover, and ‘second choice’ and deadstock materials are good for forty per cent, though profit margins are not the same in the three sectors. Prices of felt have soared recently, and materials like parasisal and Panama straw have become more expensive and harder to find, pushing manufacturers towards cheaper options. Dennis hopes for a certain stabilisation but sees it as a challenge to continually find new and deadstock materials for attractive prices.
50 | the hat magazine | 101
Michelle
Osborne and Fiona Winter
A passion for vintage materials
When Michelle Osborne, originally from California, USA, arrived in the UK, she marvelled at the way hats were worn for events and special occasions. She fell in love with veiling and, though unfamiliar with millinery, she decided she “wanted some veiling in her life!” She worked in visual merchandising at the time, for a well-known furniture and home decoration brand. Possessing beautiful millinery materials is somewhat frustrating if you don’t know how to use them, so she took a weekend course with a milliner whose studio was just around the corner from where she lived in London, and who happened to be Judy Bentinck. More classes followed at Morley College with various teachers, but she found sourcing and buying materials rather daunting. At the time, most companies had to be approached by telephone and it was not always easy
to buy small quantities. E-commerce wasn’t as big as it is now, but she did find batches of vintage materials on eBay. The online platform Etsy had just started in the UK, though it was relatively unknown – nobody was selling vintage millinery supplies on it. Michelle, with a background in retail and styling, saw an opportunity. The vintage veiling she put on Etsy
turned out to be very popular in the US, and soon she received requests for more. Little by little, the small flat she lived in with her husband filled up with boxes of millinery materials. Then one day, she received ten orders and… decided to quit her job. In 2010, Michelle took the plunge to turn her passion into a full-time business and opened a little shop: the start of Petershams Millinery Supplies. Soon, Fiona Winter joined as manager, and at some point, there were seven staff members. Ten years later, when storing space became an unsolvable issue and
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