In Vienna, this entrepreneur keeps the family business going one hat at a time

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Remarkable Living

In Vienna, this entrepreneur keeps the family business going one hat at a time

By choosing to take the reins of his family'south business and going dorsum to its roots – hat-making – Klaus Muhlbauer not merely saved the visitor simply also kept age-quondam traditions alive.

eleven Apr 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 04 Jul 2022 03:58PM)

"We take golden hands, with these golden hands we can practise almost everything", exclaimed Klaus Muhlbauer, the fourth-generation scion of hatmaker Muhlbauer, who has been helming the family unit business since 2001, when his begetter Hans decided to retire.

The brand has been making hats for the fashionable set in Austria since 1903, when Muhlbauer'due south dandy grandmother Julianna opened a small-scale millinery and shop in the Viennese suburb of Floridsdorf.

To survive the turbulent 60s, the company began producing wearing apparel alongside its dwindling hat business. But it was only when the elder Muhlbauer wanted to shut the company downwards upon his retirement that a sense of nostalgia striking his son.

Information technology was nostalgia that spurred Muhlbauer to take up the reins of his family business. (Photo: Threesixzero Productions)

Muhlbauer recounted, "I'thou non cornball in whatever way, simply this moment was a little bit sentimental." So he told his father he would take over the business on i status: "From the moment I am in the company, in whatever determination [that's fabricated], I will have the terminal word." The elder Muhlbauer accustomed the status, and his son has never looked dorsum since.

Ane critical determination Muhlbauer made was to exercise away with the apparel department and re-channel the company's efforts into hat-making. He explains: "Equally a small company you have to accept one product which is unique. And what was unique was the hats. It was the way these hats are produced and how they look."

Muhlbauer has never been happier working in the visitor. He explained: "I was overwhelmed by how squeamish it can be to call up about a piece of work in the morning, and have it set in the evening and go abode, go to bed with a beautiful piece of piece of work in your hands."

In Muhlbauer'southward studios, hats are made the old-fashioned mode – by hand. (Photo: Threesixzero Productions)

While things at piece of work have changed, one affair that has remained abiding is the production process, which every bit Muhlbauer explained, "is the only matter [that'due south] like it was 100 years ago". The reason for sticking to tradition? "The result is and so nice. By shaping hats with your ain hands and fingers, information technology is completely different from car-fabricated results."

Muhlbauer enthuses that although he is proud of the tradition, he is not relying on it equally he wants "to brand fresh things, new things".

A recent example is how a pair of sneakers, which was fabricated from a combination of different materials, inspired the pattern of a series of hats. He adapted this concept by combining information technology with designs from traditional Austrian masks, resulting in hats that looked thoroughly unique.

The results achieved by hand are superior to that achieved by mechanical means. (Photo: Threesixzero Productions)

Muhlbauer's ambition is to "dress people well, we don't want to disguise them. We want them to wait absurd, to look sexy, to await special if they want to go to a political party."

Since taking on the family unit business, designing and creating new hats has become his passion and he wants to surprise his customers with more than new designs in the coming years.

Muhlbauer pointed out: "Information technology's non ever easy to produce something new, later having [produced] several thousand hats… [but] as long as we are open to the world, I think nosotros tin can do new things."

Adjusted from the series Remarkable Living. Lookout man total episodes on CNA, every Lord's day at 7pm.

In Vienna, this entrepreneur keeps the family business going one hat at a time

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