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IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A
HEADWEAR BUSINESS CALL STEFANI
If you know Stefani McMurrey Watters then you
will remember her as the woman who took the utilitarian
cowboy hat and made it a Princess’s dream
by adding a tiara. The company, called SMartHats.com,
is still around, but McMurrey Watters got married,
had a baby and is now doing Mommy & Me Yoga
(her company is called MoMeYoga.com).
That is why SMarthats.com is up for grabs. This
is what Stefani had to say:
“SMartHats.com is looking for a buyer!
I'm ready to be a full time mommy but can't abandon
SMartHats.com. I need someone to succeed me that
will pour the same amount of enthusiasm and creativity
in it that made SMarthats.com such a success the
past five years!”
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| Wright (17 months) and Stefani
McMurrey Watters |
The company was written up in the Dallas Observer
two weeks ago. If you want to read about McMurrey
Watters and her hatty creations read on:
MARKET:
Not-So-Mad Hatters
By Patrick Williams
Neither Stefani McMurrey Watters nor Nicole LeBlanc
are, as far as we know, mad. Milliners long ago
gave up the nerve-damaging mercury compounds they
used at the beginning of the Industrial Age to
stiffen felt hats, so unlike Lewis Carroll's Mad
Hatter, Watters and LeBlanc don't appear to be
crazy—except that they make hats. In 2007.
But that's not necessarily madness. Hats are
a home-based Internet business for Watters and
a former career and art form for LeBlanc. And
besides, they just like hats.
"The only place a lady doesn't wear a hat
is in her own home, because then you look like
you might have someplace to go," says LeBlanc,
sitting with a wooden head-shaped block at her
feet among boxes of vintage ribbons, feathers
and bows in her home near Mockingbird Lane.
You might be going to a rodeo or a country-and-western-themed
nightclub, for instance, and feel the urge to
express your inner cowgirl princess. In that case,
Watters has just the topper for you at SMartHats.com.
"My signature look is the tiara on the hat,"
Watters says, referring to the crystal bling she
applies to colorful straw hats she imports from
China along with most of the tiaras. A woman who
might feel silly wearing a tiara, which would
be just about any woman not named Queen Elizabeth,
can mount her crown on a cowboy hat and look just
fine. The garage shelves in Watters' home just
north of LBJ are lined floor to ceiling with a
rainbow of Chinese straw and silvery jewels, ready
for Watters to mix and match and add a "rock-star
roll" to the brims—two tight tubes
on either side of the head.
There are no bubbling steamers to soften felt,
no tiresome stretching of material over a wooden
block, but like we said, it's 2007, and hat traditions
aren't what they used to be. Today, unadorned
hats are usually manufactured by cheap Chinese
labor or in Europe. The milliner does the designs
and adds the decorative touches. If you think
about it, Watters' business, which she started
in 2002, is the epitome of the new American economy—foreigners
provide the manufacturing, we do the designs and
selling, and the Internet and rapid shipping link
the maker to her customers.
And if you can get a magazine to publish a photo
of a celebrity like Jessica Simpson wearing one
of your hats, the next thing you know, you have
boxes of hats stacked in your yard awaiting shipping.
That happened to Watters, who quickly found out
that the combination of celebrities who like free
stuff plus publicity can add a kick to your start-up,
one-woman business.
But that was early on, when Watters was making
hats full-time, hauling them in her car trunk
to clubs, where customers would buy them off her
head, and phoning up fashion editors to pitch
her brand. Now a new mother, she runs the business
part-time, mostly online, though her hats are
also on sale in boutiques here and nationwide,
as are some knockoffs made by people who cut corners
with cheaper Chinese hats and plastic bling, she
complains.
Even the sort of high-end traditional hats that
were once LeBlanc's career at Fleur de Paris,
a custom millinery and couture shop in New Orleans'
French Quarter, rely on foreign labor. "Most
everything I use comes from somewhere else,"
says LeBlanc, who made hats at the shop for 24
years, the last 15 spent commuting to her job
via plane from Dallas.
She quit Fleur de Paris in May, but she still
makes hats, either blocking them herself—a
steamy, labor-intensive task she hates—or
ordering them blocked and then completing them
with ribbons, flowers, feathers, etc. Think of
it like a painter buying a pre-stretched canvas
rather than framing and stretching it herself.
Do you care if Picasso tacked his own cloth?
Many of the hand-crafted cloth flowers, stitched
ribbons and intricately shaped feathers LeBlanc
uses are antiques she has recovered at sales.
"Like every labor-intensive craft, it's just
not done here anymore," LeBlanc says of her
collection of cut feathers, but she might as well
be talking about the entire craft. The demand
for a stylish cloche hat isn't big enough to support
more than the handful of remaining craftspeople
who make the basic hat shapes she finishes.
Which is a shame, really, because LeBlanc can
think of lots of good reasons to wear hats. "Nobody
knows when I'm having a bad hair day," she
says. "And people will hold the door open
for you."
And if you're a lady wearing a hat—or
at least a really stylish hat—"a smile
will get you things" you might not otherwise
get, like politeness.
And there's nothing crazy in wanting that.
MoMeYoga at http://www.americanpoweryoga.com/
POB 800071 - Dallas, TX 75380-0071 - 866.767.8428
- 214.707.8112
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