REPORT
Susanne Bollmann
Creating your own market
Susanne Bollmann is the owner of Hutsalon Bollmann, a hat shop with two salons (ladies’ and men’s) in Remscheid, Germany. Trained in France as a model milliner, she pursued her training in Hamburg with Elke Martensen, and opened her business once she had earned her ‘Meister’ title (artisan master qualification). Earning a living with handmade hats alone was difficult, so she started to sell men’s hats from established brands like Stetson and Mayser. She found male customers easier than female ones: men are often faithful to a certain model, they know what they want, don’t fuss and don’t change their mind. Both Mayser and Stetson carry a line of classic shapes in basic colours – black, navy, beige – which never go out of style and can be sold year after year. For the more seasonal styles and ladies’ hats, Susanne sometimes holds a sale. This means she has relatively little deadstock goods. Of the little she has, she sometimes likes to give away some hats to a neighbouring charity or small cultural organisations. Unfortunately, the German tax system does not encourage the donation of unsold
items: donors have to pay VAT over the price of the merchandise they want to give away, even when it has lost all commercial value. Curiously, the law does not impose VAT on goods that are written off and destroyed, making it cheaper to throw deadstock in the garbage container than to gift it. If you want to donate leftover hats, you have to do as if you have thrown them out or destroyed them to avoid being taxed 19% of their price. On the buying side of her business, things have changed since Susanne started out. Some brands have upscaled and outsourced their production to a level where they are no longer interested in working with independent hat shops. Luckily, there are still brands which allow ordering small quantities, thus avoiding the need to place large orders and to tie up capital in huge stocks that may not sell.
Over the last two years, sales in Germany have been affected by the increase in the cost of living and the proximity of the war in Ukraine. As an entrepreneur, you have to find your own solutions to changing circumstances, and Susanne has done so by creating a second sales market for her products. She is present with a stand at a large variety of fairs and exhibitions like Mut zum Hut, arts and craft markets, themed fairs, and Christmas markets. This means she has to do longer working weeks, but on these weekends, she makes up for the lack of sales during the season. She has also managed to find an affordable studio space across the street from her shops, where she makes her own line of hats and can remodel or upcycle older shapes. She was once offered a stock of men’s hats dating from the 1960s by an old-fashioned hat shop in a neighbouring town. They were unsellable as such, but revamped and individualised, they found their buyers. When it comes to dealing with deadstock, it pays to be creative.
Upcycled hat for a ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ production
Susanne in her atelier
52 the hat magazine | 101
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