THE HAT MAN HIMSELF...
FRED BELINSKY TELLS IT LIKE IT IS:
 Belinsky
was in NYC for the Hat Association Dinner (don’t
you wish you were there?) and we met up one Saturday
on Fifth Avenue to talk about life, love and headwear.
The Village Hat Shop founder is probably one of
the most passionate and intelligent Hat men we
know – don’t take offense there are
others.
We found this anecdote on his blog at villagehatshop.com
Don’t Shoot That Hat!
“I’m at Bergdorf-Goodman Department
Store in New York, arguably the snootiest Fifth
Avenue shopping shrine of them all. Diane Feen,
editor of both the Hat Life Directory and the
Hat Life Newsletter, and I are meeting to check
out the store’s hat departments. At the
men’s side of the street (the B-G behemoth
occupies both sides of 5th between 57th and 58th),
I pop on a natty straw hat with a stingy brim
($175!) – Diane pulls out her digital camera
and snaps a shot. Security from Al Quada terrorists
should be so good – we are surrounded -
“No pictures, No pictures in the store”.
Well, excuuuuuuse us. The same scene transpires
later at the women’s store side of the street.
This is clearly an important store directive.
I have been a hat merchant for 27 years, currently
with four locations throughout California. For
the life of me, I cannot make sense of this policy.
Here are the reasons, as I see them, why people
will take pictures wearing hats in a retail store.
Am I missing something? Please use the comments
link below and let me know if I am:
- Hats are fun and a picture in a hat is a
good memory of an occasion, something to share
with family or friends. People will talk about
the picture with others: “Here I am at
Bergdorf-Goodman Department store wearing this
cute hat, yada yada”. Isn’t that
good store marketing?
- Maybe one wants to purchase a hat and the
image is a reference. The idea is to go home
and get an opinion from your spouse or friend.
You note the size and when ready to buy, go
on line and purchase it. Or find it in the store’s
catalog, or call them up and give this hotsy-totsy
store your credit card number an have them ship
it. “Oh, you’re not sure what hat
I want. No problem, I’ll email you the
image taken at your store”. Isn’t
this good for business?
- You are a big bad competitor and want to
knock off the hat. Well, you can’t make
a decent knock-off without the product. If you
have the resources and the resolve to have this
hat copied, you are going to need to buy the
hat to get it right. It’s a ridiculous
notion that one would make the necessary big-dollar
investment to replicate this hat and not at
least purchase one unit for the project.
- You are a terrorist and your objective is
really to stake out the store and the hat picture
is a ruse. (Or, you are looking to copy the
store’s interior design, fixtures, or
accoutrements.) Well, if your purposes were
that nefarious, wouldn’t you be using
one (or many) of the small hidden cameras that
are all over the place (and getting cheaper,
smaller, and more clandestine all the time)?
I mean James Bond had this technology forty
years ago.
Am I missing something? If hat merchants allow
customers to take pictures, isn’t this good
for business? Policies like “Don’t
shoot the hats” come from a lemmings’
mentality. Oh, everyone institutes it, this must
be good policy. Big institutions are not immune
from bad ideas (think USA).
Fred Belinsky
http://VillageHatShop.com |