From time to time I have somebody ask me how I started a hat store from just an idea. Sometimes they’re asking because they’re just curious and other times they’re asking because they want to open their own hat store. My first answer is always “a lot of hard work”. From the time we decided to open a hat store and the day we opened our doors was about three months. It was three months of a lot of research and deciding which brands to stock. One problem we had was that salespeople didn’t want to come and see us in person. I guess they didn’t take us too seriously. In fact, a lot of people (our families included) thought we were nuts when we said we wanted to open a hat store. Why would we want to open a hat store when nobody wears hats anymore? What a joke that sentence is. There was only one salesman that took the time to come visit us and that was our rep that handled the Resistol, Dobbs and Stetson hats. Since only one salesman came to see us we stocked for opening day strictly by looking at catalogs and web sites. Some of the first hat brands we carried include Stetson, Dobbs, Henschel Leather, Betmar, Tilley Endurables, Biltmore and Elope. Today, we still carry most of these brands and have added many more.

All this may sound a little too easy but rest assured it wasn’t. We worked seven days a week for well over a year and there were some manufacturers that didn’t want to deal with us. It took us over a year to be able to sell Kangol Hats, to find a supplier of hat cleaning accessories and to find such name brands as Dorfman Pacific, Bailey Hats and New Era Caps. On top of all that there are people in the headwear industry that will tell you incorrect information, or nothing at all, for their own personal gain or to keep you from finding a competitor of theirs. I won’t name names here but this one person in particular is still doing this today with other unknowing people.

Aaron Hats has come a long way since that first day about 4 1/2 years ago. We’ve become better business people, become better buyers, a little more skeptical sometimes but overall it’s been fun.

Check out our original store location with just 600 square feet.

Now look at us today.

So if you want to open a hat store and work seven days a week please do. The more hat stores the better as far as I’m concerned.

Get a hat on,

Aaron

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Hat History, Hats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.