At first a means to independent business, the owner of Hip Hat learned that listening to cancer patients and their families was a most important part of her job.
By RON MATUS
Published May 7, 2004
TAMPA HEIGHTS - The woman on the phone just wouldn't give up.
She was peppering Christine Heinen about Heinen's product - a hair piece for girls who suffer hair loss - and she wanted to know every little thing about every design. Her daughter had just been diagnosed with cancer.
"Can you just talk with me?" the woman said.
Heinen, now 41, was cranky. It was a Saturday.
"I thought, "Read the catalog,"' she recalled last week. But the woman wouldn't stop talking. And soon, Heinen said, it hit her: This was about more than a product.
Heinen relented. She listened and consoled.
Her business has never been the same. At Hip Hat, creativity and compassion merge.
"Part of my job," Heinen said from her sunny bungalow, which doubles as her workshop, "is sharing the burden."
Heinen started Hip Hat six years ago. She had just quit her job as creative director for Creative Arts, a now-defunct St. Petersburg company that made display props for movie sets and department stores. On a quest to be her own boss, she moved into a warehouse in Tampa Heights and plowed into business books.
One day, a neighbor told Heinen about her chemotherapy experiences.
Wigs, the woman complained. So hot, so itchy. "She said, "I wish I had hats with hair,"' Heinen said.
Ka-bong!
"It was like a neon sign clunked me on the head."
A product was born.
Today, Heinen's three-woman operation makes about 100 pieces of "alternative headwear" a month. They're shipped across the United States and to a handful of other countries.
Clients choose from five basic designs, then select color, texture and length. Some designs are for wearing under ball caps or head scarves. Some, for swim caps.
For clients, it's a confidence booster.
"Thank you so much for minimizing the self-consciousness and loss of femininity that Ansley was experiencing," one mother told Heinen in an e-mail. "We are grateful that you have this great talent and are willing to share it with such sick children."
Clients have sent a few hundred messages like that one.
Six years ago, Heinen admits, she wasn't ready for it. She was a designer.
"Helping people wasn't my main motivation," she said.
To work, Heinen prefers a seat at a Starbucks, next to a cup of decaf purple passion. She squeezes her fists against the sides of her head and squints, so her brain can better scrutinize a design from every possible angle.
"Imagine moving a Rubik's Cube in your head," she said.
Now, she has new angles to ponder.
"Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO much," a 10-year-old wrote Heinen, on a handmade thank-you card bordered by stars. "I feel like Alicia Keys."
Helping people can be intoxicating. It can be crushing, too.
Heinen has canceled orders because clients have died.
She has rushed orders so clients could wear them in their caskets.
Sometimes, clients ask her to hurry because their daughters are going someplace special - to Disney World maybe, or a birthday party.
"People put so much hope into it," she said. "They expect this to fix a lot."
Sometimes, clients are abusive. One told her she was "evil" because she couldn't get an order out fast enough. Another badgered her so much she was forced to call the woman's social worker.
And yet, Heinen wants to do more.
She is considering creating a nonprofit organization so she can make products for patients who can't afford them. Her products sell for $76 to $176 - a fortune for some families. At the same time, she must turn down offers from people who want to donate.
"I want to figure out how to get those groups together," she said.
Heinen has accepted her role with grace, said Donna Palmer, her office manager. If the raw emotion of it all ever weighs her down, she doesn't show it.
Even now, "I don't think she realizes how much impact she has," Palmer said.
Heinen admits she cries after a call sometimes, or takes a deep breath and goes to the gym. But more often than not, she just hunkers down and gets back to work.
