The Story of the Creation of Reckon Headwear
Reckon Headwear started a whole while back after Anna Hemminga had big long-recovery from 6 ear-surgeries every 6 months. Television was too busy for her to handle and reading literally hurt her brain. So she taught herself how to crochet beanies. It was calm, easy and meditative. Note that calm and easy were the biggest prerequisites. The next few years, she earned a couple of gas-money euros on the side by selling these beanies to colleagues on the annual O'Neill snow-board trip with the whole company to the Alps. Other than that it was nothing really mentionable
After 4 years, Anna decided to quit her job at O'Neill and headover to go to Bali and see what was going to happen. It only took about 3 months where she felt like creating. Beanies were not high in demand as you can figure but by accident she found this tailor on the outskirts of Denpasar that could make t-shirts. 2 kilos of Fabric and 2 days of sowing later, she had her first Reckon Headwear tee. No label, no packaging, She took the tees back to the beach and got advice from the boys. No one was interested in any of them, they were ugly and unfashionable for even the slow movers in the group so after a while the only choice was donating them to the local family.
Her friend, Tobia Luca, though proposed to make a tee with a flower pocket and off she went, The Luca tee was born. He bought 5, she made more of that money, sold some more and all things came together. But this type of fashion was never really her thing, She herself always wears what is functional, what makes her feel good or is inspired by, but clothing by itself was not her passion, she wanted to stick with headwear, but how?
2 years later into this unpretentious t-shirt business, Ronnie Mazzei, the licensee of O’Neill in Argentina with whom she used to work and was still close, flew her into Buenos Aires to build a business plan for him. During a drive through San Isidro we made a deal. Reckon would go where it deserved to go, develop good quality affordable felt hats and caps.
A piece of headwear that everyone can enjoy while wandering their life. Designs were drafted, and made, samples were ordered and delivered and then the final production order was placed. .When final samples arrived in, Anna stuffed a van with friends and 12 surfboards, for a weekend to G-Land and an accompanying photoshoot. Her good mate Jelle Mul was flown in as the main photographer because she just digged his perspective on photography. Raddest and craziest trips of her life, maybe even their life. They all had their signature hat, shirt or tee. A cool and humble experience that they all just said yes and joined. On top of that they even chipped in a bit of cash to make the pressure a bit lighter on her. None of them being models but since we had just a beyond genuine fun surf trip, all images came out insane. To launch the brand, shedecided that Australian markets were the way to go to launch this “semi-new” brand
After Australia the shipment arrived in Indonesia and Anna started selling hats and shirts in a variety of stores across Bali.
And here we are now, a brand that was created to inspire to wander. to follow your own rules and dreams, and to not shy away from failing forward.
A brand that started with a tiny seed of a dream and transformed into something amazing and beautiful.