Beaver Brand Hats Final Auction

[buler]

Interesting to see the Volk Hats emblem in the group. See > Volk Hats Thread



B

 

[barrowjh]

I'm also curious about the one in the upper right hand corner - we can only see the word 'Royal' but I am wondering if that was Royal Dalton, as we do not have any history of a Royal Dalton factory (that I know of) but there have been several Royal Dalton hats in these threads over the years.

 

[bowlerman]

Ah, thanks JB. Very insightful!

 

[Walt]

I think the quality issue comes from mass manufacturing and pay by piecework to facilitate low costs. I fully believe the Hatco folks are quite capable of making awesome hats also. When the Stetson 100 was Stetson's best, that price was nearly triple the price for an ounce of gold. For that same price (in gold) you can get a hat just as awesome from Hatco today (well, almost as awesome). I think the lack of demand led to dilution of quality as the factories tried to get prices down to stimulate some orders and stay busy. Then, the lower quality comes back at them as customers are disappointed with the hats. A self-reinforcing downward spiral.

I think you are spot on. Factory operations tend to focus on volume to keep a large operation going, but with ever increasing costs to run a business (labor, materials, etc) and to avoid raising prices too high such that most customers are priced out something has to give and using inferior materials or reducing quality of construction (that is labor time) is sometimes chosen as the easiest route to keep volume sales up. Beaver's prices were still high enough that the expectation of their customers for the prices paid probably resulted in their strategy backfiring.

As their prices went up sales went down (I had online Western retailers tell me this about Beaver so their products were dropped) and I can say for sure that at least some of their hats were inferior to earlier production as I compared them at a western store that had old and new production side-by-side. And by old I don't mean just 20+ years old but even over the hats they made in the late 90's and later 2000's as compared to their production of the last 5 years or so. Seems self evident that as they struggled in the last couple of years they increasingly moved to the lower quality materials and/or reducing labor time spent on construction to try and keep volume up and it didn't work. For a time before that their prices also increased much higher than core inflation.

 

[barrowjh]

Selective Quality

Here is a pure Beaver thin-ribbon OR/Strat clone purchased via thefedorastore in April 2009, a special Father's Day sale, for under $300:





BB could certainly make nice hats. I have not pesonally encountered any 'bad' BB hats but several here have posted of such so I believe it happened, very unfortunate. The factory must have been carrying too much debt to adapt to a custom niche. compare to Akubra - BB could make hats just as well as Akubra, and Akubra lives on, so what was the deal? My guess is the debt load was such that BB could not scale back into a smaller niche of custom bespoke and high quality w/low quantity production. Insufficient capital to enable them to adapt to a lower quantity niche. Anyone with a better guess, or maybe the real truth?

 

[Bob Beecher]

Since I wear a size 8, I don't see lots of hats that interest me, but.....

Since I didn't have a fedora in blue, and this came from the Beaver Brand auction, I picked up this nice-looking hat for less than the $50 asking price. I will have to take my own pics and post them when the hat arrives. That is, if I can remember how to do that!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/380691935669

 

[John Galt]

[
Langenberg Hat Co [Beaver Brand] did own Lion Hats.

Thank you sir, I thought so. Great boxes, huh? I will post a photo of a BB box I have tomorrow. It is beautiful.

 

[Matt Deckard]

Tell me if you find my original WWI Campaign hats that were sent in as samples... I'd like them back someday.

 

[TheDane]

Tell me if you find my original WWI Campaign hats that were sent in as samples... I'd like them back someday.

Have you tried to contact this seller? Rumors say, he bought 17 trailers of hats at the auction. People who bought from him say, he's a very friendly guy, so I guess it would be worth a try

 

[Shel]

It's the way of the world. Lots of history and memories in that building, for sure.

 

[RBH]

Tell me if you find my original WWI Campaign hats that were sent in as samples... I'd like them back someday.

Matt, I did not see everything but I do not remember seeing any vintage campaign hats.
I did see quite a few vintage fedoras.