Guilford Entrepreneur's Business About Helping Homeless Stay Warm

GUILFORD, CT — Cooper Schwartz was a “pretty good” hockey player, but a concussion sidelined him. Missing the sport, he found another way to enjoy it; he became a referee. Using money he’d earned from reselling items on eBay, he paid for a class and then refereed 30 or 40 games.

The money he made doing that gig would seed his new business. And not just any business, but one with an altruistic goal: to help keep the homeless a little warmer through often-brutal New England winters.

He's volunteered at the Community Dining Room, a longtime Branford soup kitchen that serves the hungry in shoreline towns. He also passed out gloves and hats to the homeless in New Haven last December.

He eventually decided he would combine his commitments: business and altruism.

Cooper is just 14 years old.

“Since middle school, I worked at a soup kitchen, and that really inspired me to help,” the Guilford High School teen explained. “And the past few years, we’d pass out socks and beanies and gloves at the New Haven Green.” The winter wear items had been collected from schools.

But Cooper didn’t just distribute gloves and caps. He met with homeless people.

“I got to know many and their stories. Everyone has a story. They do. I talked to these people, I hung out for hours. They each have their stories," he said. "That inspired me.”

And when they told him that hats and gloves are among the things they needed most to survive the winter, the inspiration turned to action — and Hedgehog Beanies was born.

Cooper created his own company, Hedgehog Beanies, to feed his interest in business but also as a way to help the homeless people whose needs he saw.

When Patch spoke to Cooper in mid-November, he was in his family’s Landons Way basement preparing orders. And getting ready for a delivery of 100 beanies to Columbus House in New Haven.

Columbus House has been providing help for the homeless since 1982, with an emergency shelter and a “continuum of housing and services designed to help people who are homeless move toward independence.”

Cooper, who graduated from the Country School last spring and received the school's community service award, is now a high school freshman. He has always been interested in business, he said.

“Learning how to manage money, how to sell things, like I did on eBay” he said. “But if I can do that [while] helping people, then that’s an awesome learning experience.”

The idea was to design, create and sell beanies — and for every one sold, donate one to the homeless in the region.

“People want to do more to help others,” he said. "This way they can."

So he took his idea to his parents, Lauren and Ian Schwartz, and they were on board.

With assistance from his dad — a Yale New Haven Hospital senior vice president and ER physician —that included a loan and "help with legal stuff,” Hedgehog Beanies became a Connecticut corporation.

In late June, Cooper got started.

For one thing, this business would require a logo. How about a hedgehog? he envisioned. “I’ve always thought it was such a cute animal.”

“It could really make a cool logo, I thought. I could really do this!”

Next, he had to purchase generic beanies wholesale, purchase the hedgehog design, and have it embroidered onto iron-on patches.

He bought printers, a computer, shipping labels and supplies, and then set up the business in his basement. He has gotten a little help from his family including siblings Avery, 12, who helps promote Hedgehog Beanies with the social media marketing piece, and young Cameron, 8, who helps with shipping.

“My whole family, my friends are all such a big part of this,” he said.

Lauren Schwartz said that while her son is the "captain of the ship," there are many deck hands willing and happy to help.

For the past several months, Cooper has been working on Hedgehog Beanies, which launched Nov. 7. And he’s made sure it’s abundantly clear that the business is far more than just an online hat shop.

And as he'd promised, for every beanie purchased, he “donates a beanie to a homeless person so that they can stay warm for the winter ahead.”

Cooper said he hopes to “raise awareness for homelessness in the hopes that it can be eliminated.”

The Hedgehog Beanies website provides links to resources to learn more about homelessness and ways to help in New England cities from Boston to Bridgeport.

Cooper hopes the business will grow and that, along the way, the homeless population in the region is helped.

“It’s been a great business opportunity for me to learn, but more than that it’s giving me the opportunity to really give back.”

And though she's his mom and is proud of him regardless, Lauren said Cooper is "just really a very kind and thoughtful person."

"He's always willing to help out. He's just a really good kid," she said. And he's one "you can have a conversation with. He's an interesting person."

Interesting, and a young man of his word, in the days after Thanksgiving, Cooper met with homeless people in New Haven to personally hand out beanies.

Working to end homelessness and hunger in Connecticut

During mid-November's National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, a municipal campaign began to educate and provide “concrete ways to impact homelessness” in cities and towns across the state.

Launched last year by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the Mayors Homelessness Prevention Task Force is led by Mayor Ben Blake of Milford and Mayor Erin Stewart of New Britain. It has engaged mayors and first selectmen around the state in taking action to end homelessness locally.

The campaign offers towns and their residents ways to make an impact including passing a resolution committing the town to ending homelessness in the region.

“Connecticut’s towns and their residents are essential partners in the effort to end homelessness,” said Dr. Richard Cho, CEO of Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness. “We hope that everybody in our state will give thought to how they can play a role in ending homelessness.”

Cooper Schwartz is helping, in his way and through his business, to raise awareness and keep the homeless warm this winter.

One Hedgehog Beanie at a time.