Notes

Jessie: My name’s Jessie, I’m a milliner, and that means that I make hats. The name of my company is à la tête, and I make hats, just like this one. I work right here. This is my studio. Making hats is very fun. I make mostly felt and straw hats. Some of my hats are very traditional, and some are very crazy with toy cars on the brim, or tassels that are dolls. Not a lot of people wear hats these days, but I think they look really good, so, that’s why I make them. My hat making career started a few years ago. My first job was working for a fashion company, and then it downsized and I got laid off. So then, I started making headbands and hair accessories, and decided to go back to school to learn how to make hats. I started my hat company in 2009. The best thing about being self-employed is being my own boss, and I can work whenever I want. One of the biggest challenges is being self-motivated, I have to make all my own hours, and make sure that I get up and go to work every day. There are a lot of challenges. As a small business, I’m competing with a lot of large hat companies. It is very difficult to make money as a small business because most of the money that I do make I have to put back into the business because I’m small and growing, and there’s a lot of things that I still need to buy for my business. I don’t have any employees right now, but I had an intern once, but one day he didn’t show up for work, so I had to let him go. I make two collections of hats a year. A fall collection basically, and a spring collection. In total in a year, I make about fifty hats. I sell the hats in a bunch of different kinds of stores, some of them are small hat shops, and others are larger department stores, and then I also sell them online. The hats are all very expensive, they cost from a hundred and sixty dollars to about three hundred dollars. I’m trying to grow my business, I’m trying to get my hats into many more stores around the world. My hats are currently pretty popular in Korea, but I’m hoping to sell them in a lot of other countries like Brazil, perhaps. It’s really challenging having my own small business, but it’s extremely rewarding.