Armed with a degree in political science from Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., Polly Singer set off for Capitol Hill as an intern. For a month. Then she moved to New York and spent eight years in the music business, work-ing for producers and promoters booking U2, Bruce Springsteen and the like. Toward the end of her stint in the Big Apple in 1993, while working for the chairman of the record label EMI, Singer fell and broke her foot. Recuperating in her fifth-floor walkup, she dug out some old hats and started hot-gluing dried flowers on them. (Hot glue is the bane of milliners, she later learned.) One day she got a hairbrush stuck in her hair and put a purple velvet "crazy hat" over the brush and went to work, garnering compliments along the way.
A friend suggested Singer take classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She finished the three-year program with a millinery degree. In 1996, she interned with a designer who got a contract to make hats for the Austin Powers movie - a nice thing to add to her resume.
Singer designed hats on the side while holding part-time and full-time jobs. In 1998, she moved back to Georgetown, where she is a seventh-generation native, then to Lexington a year later. "I was going to take time off," she said. "Then J. Peterman was looking for an assistant merchandising manger." She worked there at the same time Peterman, portrayed by actor John Hurley, was a running plotline on Seinfeld. The friend who encouraged her to take the millinery classes was Hurley's sister.
One of Singer's last full-time jobs before going solo was as executive director for the Lexington Art League. A board member gave her a flyer about a Derby hat show. "I was church and Easter; I hadn't thought of marketing hats for Derby," she said. Talk about a career-turner.
In 2003, Singer's husband encouraged her to create a Web site. "I thought it would be clinical," she said. But the hats started selling, and referrals were flying. The online part of the business is constant. "You're never done with it," she said of maintaining a site. She does the photography and writing, answers e-mail, packs and ships the hats. "I see why independent professionals burn out," she said. She formed an LLC in 2007 for All You Need Is Love, Hats and Veils.
Singer believes the trick to growing a business is to do it slowly. "There are problems when you grow too fast." She'd really like to hire an "office manager-type person" during Derby season, but she doesn't want her hat-making business to grow to the point of mass production. She likes making each hat by hand.
Hats account for 85 percent of her business, half of those for Derby and the other half for Del Mar, Belmont and other stakes races. "I thought I would do more bridal veils, but it's 15 percent of what I do," she said. Almost all of her hat clients are out of state, and the veils are mostly local.
In the beginning, Singer was pricing her hats too low and a number of people told her to raise the prices. She saw gallery shows in Louisville selling hats for $1,000 while she was selling hers for around $200. "When I raised my prices, I sold a lot more," she said.
She has made hats for a high-profile clientele, such as Star Jones at the Derby, which made it into People magazine, and a TVG anchor for Del Mar in California. Her products will appear on an upcoming episode of Extreme Makeover. She also sells hats wholesale to stores in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland and Tennessee.
Singer is donating a couple of hats for the Lexington Foundation's "Hats for Life" auction on April 10 at Victorian Square. Tickets are $30, with proceeds going to the Lexington Cancer Foundation.
All business owners are hit up for charitable donations from time to time: money from larger companies, products and services from smaller ones. It's important to have a policy so you know when to say yes and how to say no. Singer's main criterion for donating products is that the money raised will "help directly." She also makes sure the organization doesn't do any testing on animals. And she doesn't use fur in any of her hats. "I don't do fur at all," she said, and added with a smile, "And I don't do ugly hats."
To learn more about Singer's work, visit www.hatsandveils.net
Kathie Stamps is the co-founder of www.ISBO.biz, an online directory of independent/small business owners.