New start after a sports career: from puck to hat – Munich

Patrick Köppchen can still clearly remember the look of his trainer, although 19 years have passed since he met him. The 42-year-old was then in the early stages of his professional ice hockey career and played in Hamburg. But he also had other interests. Mostly of a fashionable nature. So he’d clamped a pair of jeans in the vice in the hockey dressing room, where players’ sticks are usually cut to size, to be artistically remodeled. “The coach looked at me, shook his head and walked on,” he recalls with a smile.

Köppchen tells this story on a cold December day in the heart of Munich, on the Platzl. Because it has a lot to do with the fact that he now runs a hat factory there, diagonally across from the Hofbräuhaus, in a small courtyard, together with his business partner Gabriel Schütt.

Between 2001 and 2019, Köppchen played more than 1000 games in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL), he broke this barrier as only the fourth player ever. He won the German ice hockey championship twice and took part in two world championships with the national team. And he made a special entry in the German ice hockey history books: he played 506 of his DEL games in a row, without an injury break, illness or suspension. Even broken fingers and toes or bruises of any kind couldn’t stop him from playing. On the way to his second championship, a disk hit his face and he had to be sewn up with 18 stitches. Two days later he was still playing again. This self-sacrificing behavior earned him the nickname “Iron Man”.

Now the flat iron in the Fatzke hat factory in the heart of Munich city center is turning him into an Iron Man. “I didn’t see it coming like this,” says Köppchen, “but looking back, it had to happen that way.”

For Köppchen, Fatzke (that’s what Schütt and he call each other) has come full circle. Born in Berlin, he played his first ice hockey premier league games in Munich in the early 2000s before starting what he calls his personal “Germany tour” and playing in Hamburg, Hanover, Ingolstadt, Nuremberg and Düsseldorf. Now, more than 20 years later, he’s back in Munich. In the studio, between the order slips on the wall, a couple of colorful autograph cards from Köppchen are a reminder of his professional days. Some of his customers also bridge the gap between the two professional worlds: Köppchen has already equipped numerous ice hockey professionals and their wives with hats, for some he has even created wedding hats.

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Köppchen’s interest in the world of fashion shone through in his youth, when he dressed more extravagantly than many others. In his teenage years and his first years as a professional ice hockey player, his passion for fashion “really broke out,” he says. Köppchen bleached and dyed his jeans, designed trousers and T-shirts for his teammates. And he’s had a lot to do with bringing many of his fellow players down an acceptable fashion path. Other ice hockey professionals have heard that he has pointed out to other players that they were poorly dressed. He doesn’t want to name the “boys” himself. “We could fill the whole newspaper with that alone,” he jokes.

When he had to end his professional career almost three years ago due to serious injuries, his further path was actually already mapped out. Köppchen had already acquired his first fitness trainer certificates, it seemed clear that he would eventually become the fitness trainer of the Düsseldorf EG. But he noticed “that maybe I’m a bit fed up with sport”. He toyed with the idea of ​​opening a bar or restaurant, but many advised against it. Exactly in this phase of thinking, his buddy Gabriel Schütt contacted him and enthused about how much fun he had making his first hat. And asked him if he wouldn’t like it too. Köppchen had – “and now we are here”.

The fact that they ended up at the Platzl – without any vitamin B, emphasizes Köppchen – was not a matter of course. Because just getting a taste of the world of millinery turned out to be a big challenge. Köppchen first asked around in Germany to be able to learn from someone, but quickly expanded his radius because he hardly got any answers to his inquiries. He searched the world, including New York and Los Angeles, but to no avail. A milliner said he could stop by for eleven days if he brought $11,000 with him.

Of course he also takes a sewing machine course

But Köppchen stuck with it and was able to rely on his credo “Things happen the way they’re supposed to happen”. He recalled meeting a milliner in Sydney on the last day of a month-long road trip across Australia. He contacted her and she immediately invited him. He spent almost four weeks in her shop, his apartment was on the legendary Bondy Beach. Köppchen went through every step of the craft with her, “then I had all the basics”. Back in Germany he also took a sewing machine course, because he had nothing to do with that before. “I was happy when I realized it was one,” he says, laughing.

Although the filigree hat-making seems to have little to do with the sometimes rough sport of ice hockey, there are some qualities from his long time as a professional athlete that also help Köppchen in his second career. In team sports, in particular, certain values ​​are elementary that sometimes get lost in the free economy, he believes. Discipline, ambition, communication – the native Berliner took all of that with him from the ice rink to the Platzl, “it always helps me in the studio too”.

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Communication has always been one of his strengths, and Koppchen has been the captain and leader of several of his teams. “When he talks in the dressing room, the young players stop swallowing,” one of his sporting directors said of him. Just as he used to trust his fellow players on the ice, today he trusts Gabriel Schütt. And what was the applause he received in the arenas when he was a professional is now a smile on the faces of customers when they leave the studio with a Fatzke hat.

All Fatzke hats are basically made of fur felt or straw, the materials sometimes come from Quito or New York. Ribbons and embroideries are designed individually, and almost everything is processed, from silk to small pieces of customer jewelry. Köppchen sees his job as helping people create their own hats. From time to time, he and Schuett have to intervene, because with the many options available to customers, it can sometimes become too much. “Sometimes less is more,” he says. A customer had half his household items with him when he came to the studio.

The mirrors on one side of the wall make the wood-panelled studio appear larger than it is. Demonstration models of the two hat makers hang on the opposite wall and under the ceiling, as well as hats that have already been ordered and have not yet been picked up by customers. “For inspiration,” says Köppchen. In the corner is the basket of Heidi, the young dachshund lady from Schütt. She darts back and forth in the store from time to time. And between all kinds of fabrics, two crimson armchairs are positioned, next to which various bottles of spirits are placed on a small table. In case creativity falters.

In order to be able to design the individual pieces in the best possible way, Köpfchen and Schütt worked hard. A device specially made for you, with a retro-looking iron next to it, guarantees that the hat blank is supplied with hot steam from all sides in a balanced way when blocking out. In addition, they measure not only the head size of the customers, but also the head shape, because there are big differences. “A 57 is not the same as a 57,” explains Köppchen. Sometimes the head shape is elongated, sometimes more square and some even have a head like a “Lego man”.

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The exact shape of the head is first put on paper and then sawn down precisely onto a wooden form. These wooden discs pile up in several stacks in the entrance area of ​​the manufactory. Vera, Lexi, Baumi, Gabi, Didi, Volkan and many other names are written on them with a marker pen, 30 stacked on top of each other, all the same at first glance, but all unique. “We have the head of every customer with us, like the shoemaker’s last,” explains Köppchen.

He is particularly pleased that Fatzke recently started a collaboration with the Munich menswear label Hannibal, the first of which was a jointly designed hat. In the spring, Köppchen and Schütt want to add a few details to a Hannibal collection. Such collaborations are particularly exciting for the fashion man Köppchen, as they enable him to delve even deeper into the world of fashion. “We are the cherry on the cake with our hats”, but there is also so much more to discover. Schütt and he still have a few ideas, such as opening a pop-up store in Ibiza or Mykonos for a few months.

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What Köppchen misses, however, is the exchange with other hat makers. He had imagined working “hand in hand” in certain areas, such as ordering materials. Instead, you have little to do with the others, “which is really a shame”. So much more would be possible if you worked together, he thinks – that’s where his team spirit from sport comes through.

Once a hat maker, always a hat maker? Or will you return to the ice hockey world at some point? Köppchen has learned to “never say never”. But for now, it’s the world of millinery that fulfills him. “As it is right now, I can’t imagine anything nicer.”