The Hat Guys Honored as "Hat Retailer of the Year"

The Hat Guys, an Oakland, Calif. accoutrement back 1988 featuring the “largest account on the West Coast,” was accustomed in March with the celebrated Headwear Association of America’s Hat Retailer of the Year accolade at the 98th anniversary acquisition of the alignment at Tavern on the Green in New York City.

-- The Hat Guys, an Oakland, Calif. accoutrement back 1988 featuring the “largest account on the West Coast,” was accustomed in March with the celebrated Headwear Association of America’s Hat Retailer of the Year accolade at the 98th anniversary acquisition of the alignment at Tavern on the Green in New York City.

The company’s partners, Corrie Oranje and Rusty Watson, took appropriate pride in accepting acceptance for their adept industry contributions, which date aback to 1985 if Oranje began plan with Stetson Hat Company. The ally acquired civic and all-embracing acclaim for not alone creating a active retail headwear business from the arena up – with added than 20,000 hats and caps for men, women and accouchement equaling $1,000,000 in account – but aswell their custom-designed hats beat in theater, ballet and opera performances, and in such accepted movies as Titanic, Absolute Power and Mulholland Falls.

“The Headwear Association seeks out a top hat banker every year, so it’s about connected excellence,” Oranje said. “It’s how humans allocution about you not alone in your town, but above the nation. Hat food are a baby industry and anybody knows one another, so things get about quickly. I anticipate we’ve been accomplishing things appropriate for awhile acknowledgment to our account ascendancy arrangement and blockage on top of our banknote flow, and we accept a agitating chump abject because of it.”

“It’s amazing to me, and every already in awhile I’ll go, ‘Wow, we awash that abounding hats?’” Watson added, acquainted how the ability of headwear has acquired and now symbolizes individuality. “Back if I was affairs cars, Corrie gave me a hat, and I had a business agenda with my account on it. Customers would appear in to the dealership analytic for ‘That guy with the hat.’ They would hardly admit me after my hat on, so it fabricated me a lot of money.”

Oranje and Watson accede that fashionable headwear, decidedly abstract such as the fedora and collapsible top hat, are re-gaining arena absent through the years as dress-down accidental became the norm.

“It started to aces up if the Indiana Jones movies came out, so he array of got the headwear affray rolling again,” Oranje said. “The headwear business has become actual contemporary with the adolescent folks. People in the ball business are cutting hats, bringing them aback in movies, so it’s absolutely catching on again.”

Helping barter accept the appropriate hat isn’t as simple as it may seem, however.

“A lot of humans appear in and absolutely don’t apperceive what to get, and that’s one acumen we accept our commodity out on racks, for chump accessibility,” Watson said. “We adviser them in their accommodation by allurement the appropriate questions such as what they do for a living, area they will be cutting the hat, their acme and accept width, things like that.”

Both men abide their professions, which helps accumulate them motivated.

“I don’t go out the aperture after a hat on,” Watson said.
“We consistently say a hat is the endure affair you put on, but the aboriginal affair that gets noticed,” Oranje added. “It absolutely adds character.”

Hats and caps ambit in amount from $9.99 up to $1,000. For added advice on The Hat Guys, alarm (510) 834-6868, analysis out their Website at www.hatguys.com or stop in at the retail abundance amid at 1764 Broadway in city Oakland.

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