“Hello. Welcome to Hats Plus,” says a man with a warm and gentle voice by the store entrance.

Meet store manager Tod Canon.

Tod Canon is the manager at Hats Plus, and he's pictured here wearing his favorite hat, a Stetson Temple.

Visit the shop and odds are pretty good that Tod will be the first employee you encounter, as he helps direct you toward the hats you are looking for.

More than just another friendly face, Tod is a true hat expert who has worked in the hat industry for most of his adult life. He got his start at Star Headware.

“I have a cousin who is a wholesaler of hats,” Tod said. “On the wholesale end, their salesman had quit.”

Tod took over that position. “I was with them for 15 years,” he said.

Eventually, Tod decided to fly solo as a hat wholesaler.

“I had my own business for three years,” he said.

Although that business didn’t work out quite as he had hoped, he had developed a good relationship with Stuart Korman, the original owner of Hats Plus.

“When I was going out of business, I sold the last of my hats to the old owner,” Tod explained. A day or two later, Stuart called Tod and said that he was an employee short for the day and wondered if Tod could help with sales. Already extremely knowledgeable about hats and an outgoing salesman, Tod was soon working here full time. Not long after that, he was promoted to store manager.

“I have been at Hats Plus for 8 years,” Tod said.

When asked what his favorite part about working at Hats Plus, he doesn’t hesitate: “The diversity of the customers that we get. People travel such a long ways to come here. There was a guy from Tennessee and some people wanted to come down to visit him. He said no; he wanted to come to Chicago and visit the hat shop. We get people that drive in from Wisconsin, Indiana and downstate Illinois on a daily basis—just to visit on a day trip.”

His favorite hat. “Steton Temple. I love Indiana Jones.”

His employees agree that he is one of the most affable people they know.

“Tod is a down to earth person,” says Courtney Alvarado, one of the store’s web gurus. “They say a manager is supposed to be uptight, but he’s not really like that.

“He’s funny. He can lighten any situation up.”

When pressed for an example, Courtney laughs, “That we can print…hmmm.”

Of course, there is much more to the man than his profession. Tod has been happily married to his lovely wife Lauren for 22 years. They have a 19-year-old son named Matthew and a 14-year-old daughter named Sidney.

Tod attended Illinois State and graduated from Northeastern Illinois in 1985 with a marketing degree.

His greatest passions, outside of family and work, are travel and sports. This summer he took his family to his favorite destination: Hawaii.

In the realm of sports, he has a knack for finding himself at events most Chicagoans would kill to attend.

“I’ve been to both Bears’ Super Bowls…one of them I got very wet at,” he laughs.

He also was at the 1997 championship game for the Chicago Bulls. His last great sporting dream: “The Cubs winning a championship would make me the happiest.”

Yeah, well, I think you gotta get in line with the rest of us for that one.