Economics of hat retailing

My sister-in-law is buyer/floor sales for a small men's fine clothing store. She said they did not carry fine hats mostly because of the cost of inventory and the reluctance of the customer who might spend $500 on a suit to spend $150 on a hat.

They got in an assortment of Tommy Bahama hats once and the $30 models sold pretty quickly, the $60 models less quickly and the ones that were $100-plus took an entire year to turn over.

Discouraging, so much education that must accompany retailing (hell- wholesale too, I am sure) such esoteric things as are hats today.

I would never drop 5 bills on a suit -cause I am a workin' stiff who'd have $500 on a hanger in perpetuity. I just do not wear such- on or off the job. Though for someone who moves in such circles that make this a uniform- I can see completely being able to justify such an expenditure- on a jacket & pair of trousers.-LOL

One fifty on headwear tho' -no problem- did it last week. But I still find vintage the best bargain going, both in terms of price & quality, although some of the prices today ($750 for a NOS '5o's Strat? ...uh, no.) seem to be making this a weaker line of reasoning.

The hat companies don't make it easy for ya'll either. They seem weak & scattered -unable to provide support or much in the way of selection either. Very unimaginative.

Anyway- welcome to TFL. Glad you are here!

Thank you for the welcome RB.

I wish I had a job where a $500 suit was everyday wear. Then again, the stress might kill me.

re: your location. Is it true what they say about Dixie?

Sorry, I was humming that song today as I walked the dog and watched the sweet magnolias blossom.

Wally in Cincy said:

My sister-in-law is buyer/floor sales for a small men's fine clothing store. She said they did not carry fine hats mostly because of the cost of inventory and the reluctance of the customer who might spend $500 on a suit to spend $150 on a hat.

They got in an assortment of Tommy Bahama hats once and the $30 models sold pretty quickly, the $60 models less quickly and the ones that were $100-plus took an entire year to turn over.

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Plus old Gus Miller has the hat market wrapped up in Cinci.

I heard a similar tale, Wally, from the sole proprietor of a local medium- to high-end menswear store. He can sell wool hats and cheap straws, he said, but anything over a hundred bucks languishes on the shelves.

There is but one hats-only retailer in the entire Puget Sound region, an area home to something in excess of four million souls. Other shops have come and quickly gone over the years. I know of one bricks-and-mortar custom hatter's storefront, and a couple of us home-based operators. (Well, only a couple that I'm aware of.)

But I'm seeing more and more "real" men's hats all the time. They're mostly woolies or those treated canvas jobs and such, and the younger guys are going for straw stingy brims (cloth ones too) in a biggish way. Those might not be the hats to stir much interest among the fellows around this joint, but I take it as a hopeful sign. After all, a guy willing to wear a cheap hat is a likely candidate for a better one. Or so I like to think.

I see three aspects of the difficulties today with retailing high-end hats in a physical store, especially one which is devoted to menswear generally rather than a specialist hat shop.

First, hats have become a specialty item. Only a very few customers walking into a suit store will be interested in them at all, and only a a very few of that very few will be interested enough to pay more for quality. Though the difference between a $100 hat and a $30 hat may be obvious to the average fedora lounger, it is not so to the average person who is buying a hat on a whim.

Second, lack of specialization and variety. This builds on the first reason. Prior to the 1960s, hats were fashionable items that every man had to have. Hence, physical retailers could stock a few of the most popular hat styles for a season in varying quality/price levels and be assured to sell them all in a reasonable amount of time. However, because hats are not fashionable today the way they were, those who are interested in hats now are not going to be interested in the "hat of the season," given that there is no hat of the season. Anything goes. As shown by the diverse interests and tastes on this board, people interested in more expensive hats will all have distinctive tastes that can't be fulfilled by only having a few styles in stock. This will discourage them from buying from non-specialist retailers, as those retailers can't possibly cater to the wide variety of tastes.

Third, the specialists who are willing to pay the most are also probably the most knowledgeable and likely have experience of various brands. They know that few brands today match the quality of historical hats due to changing economies of scale. They usually realize this is because greatly reduced sales have forced manufacturers to use cheaper methods and inferior materials in order to merely stay in business, and that this results in new hats that are of lesser quality, discouraging them from buying new except from a few very specific brands (Akubra, Borsalino, Stetson etc).

All of this spells doom when it comes to selling hats for all but a few brick-and-mortar specialty shops. The best any generalist menswear shop can hope to do is have a few low/mid-priced hats banging around to sell to the rare customer who wants one with their suit on a whim.

Yes,the reason that Cloth and Wool hats are made is that the hit the 30 and 100 dollar price point. Hat manufactors understand the market and realise that these are the limits for the general population as a price point. I know when I wear my Campdraft I see a lot of interest in it from other men. But when they ask how much over 100 dollars.:eeek: is the reaction. We here on the board have a biased point of view. We love wearing hats and see nothing wrong with spending a couple of hunderd on a good hat.
Remember the quest to get Stetson to make a REAL repoduction of the Strat and not this modern one. They realized that the market for the full on Strat was not big enough to support the production of the hat. Sad but true. In retail also there are no sales people trained in hat's in a normal Men's department. Hat's just sit there waiting for the Man that is interested in buying one to come by and pick it up. So 30 dollars is a disposable amount that Sellers have found that will get a sale to someone who would pick it up on a whim and if they did not like how it looked on them they would not have buyer's remorse in purchasing it. The hundred dollar price is for those who liked the 30 dollar hat and want something nicer. Then if someone want's a nicer hat the start searching the internet and find the Fedora Lounge and see what a real hat looks and how it is constructed and why you spend the money to buy a custom or vintage fedora. An the Hat companies then lose the committed hat wearers business to eBay and all the great custom hat makers we know and love. As we see more 30 dollar hats walking around Stetson might start to see that they are missing a chance of changing the market and creating the hat business again. Taking the New Era baseball cap wearer and turning them into a Fedora wearing lover. The market is there it just will need the right Hat maker to exploit it.

Just me two cents.

I agree with ToP. Hats are a tricky thing to sell in the 21st century. Not as tricky as all that, but still tricky. The hats that DO sell are almost invariably the cheaper wool, paper, cloth or straw ones.

I know that higher quality hats do sell, but obviously, less often. I expect that most hat-shops sell them off during sales, and not during any other time. It's the only way to really get them out the door - to sell them at a discount price.

At the risk of being slightly off topic, I'm a bit shocked to hear several FL members say that $500 is too expensive for them for a suit, but $100 for a hat is okay (that part less shocking, of course). Here I thought that my idea of suit-buying, that $500 is on the cheap side for suits, as a glance at the Brooks Brothers website shows you numerous $1500-$2000 suits with hardly a one less than $1000, was bordering on junk.

I have to wonder, since suits are super popular here obviously, what do you guys pay for your suits on average?

Also, to get back on topic, what exactly IS the difference between a $30-50 hat vs a $100-300 hat? For example, I have a wool-felt Homburg that I got on ebay for $34.50 that I was actually very pleased with, though perhaps it wouldn't pass muster here. How much more would I get if I had dropped $100?

Fur felt hats are seen to keep their shape better, they're longer lasting and they're made of sturdier materials. I think that's the situation regarding the difference in prices.

My two cents: I bought my first fedora, a Stetson Gun Club, from the shop in Seattle. I liked the hat and wore it for a great many years while I lived in Alaska and needed a hat of some kind. I'd say that that store was (is?) as good a retail outlet as I'd hope to find. But now I don't know if I'd even go into a retail store like that. If I lived near a real city and some one like Art Fawcett had a bespoke hat store there (just as all real cities have bespoke tailors) I would be a paying customer. My point is that a hat retailer must, for his own sake, identify his market. If he wants to sell purely functional fedoras, like my Gun Club, and cheap fashion hats, that might work. If he wants to sell excellent hats, then its going to have to be custom. I don't see how anyone would make a living selling $150 to $250 hats in a bricks and mortar store. The customer would have to be neither here nor there, so to speak, and how many of those are there?

Shangas said:

Fur felt hats are seen to keep their shape better, they're longer lasting and they're made of sturdier materials. I think that's the situation regarding the difference in prices.

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Be that as it may, I would have to ask, how much longer would a $100+ dollar hat last and how much sturdier is it than my $35 wool felt Homburg? My Homburg, such as it is, seems to me to be a pretty sturdy, elegant and attractive hat, and I felt like I got a pretty decent bargain on it; I probably could have paid $50 and not felt as though I'd been ripped off.

I wonder, does the value of these expensive hats actually arise from their practical superiority, or merely from the aesthetic value? That is to say, are they concretely, in purely practical terms, $70+ better than mine, or does their superiority lie rather in such intangibles as the attention to minute details, the particular excellence of form, fit, etc which are apparent to a devoted connoisseur but lost on an ordinary joe like me?

Back in the 'old days,' an average fedora could cost anywhere from 3 to 10 dollars, and you got a quality fur felt fedora that looked good for a long time, depending on its usage. And almost everyone wore them. It was part of a man's daily dress.

These days, a hat of comparable quality costs anywhere from ten to 150 or more times as much. And hats are not mainstream anymore by any stretch of the imagination. So a hat that costs that much money is going to have a very limited audience, compared to the general population.

These days, a 'cheap' hat usually falls in that $30 - 60 range, as is usually made of wool. These are 'only' 10 to 20 times as much as the old days, but it is a reasonable amount for men who are making an impulse buy.

Wool hats can work either way, as far as leading to more expensive, better quality purchases. Yes, there are men who will move up, but there are also men who will see that their new wool hat looks like crap after they got caught in the rain and think that hats are not worth the money if they're going to look like this after such a short time, not realizing that they 'got what they paid for.'

scottyrocks said:

Back in the 'old days,' an average fedora could cost anywhere from 3 to 10 dollars... These days, a hat of comparable quality costs anywhere from ten to 150 or more times as much.

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Well, you're right that in absolute dollars the amount is more, but I think inflation over the past 60-70 years would mostly account for that. $10 was a significant amount of money in 1940, equivalent to $162.62 today. This inflation calculator can help you understand the relative value of the price tag of historical hats: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

So the prices haven't gone up *that* much, but they have gone up a little due to a smaller market. Related to this, they can't sell nearly as many of the high end ones, so they need to make more profit on each hat to maintain large production and distribution networks (manufacturing facilities overhead, distribution costs etc), and therefore are forced to use cheaper materials to remain profitable businesses.

If hats do become generally popular again, then we are sure to see quality materials and manufacturing return as demand grows.

scottyrocks said:

Back in the 'old days,' an average fedora could cost anywhere from 3 to 10 dollars, and you got a quality fur felt fedora that looked good for a long time, depending on its usage. And almost everyone wore them. It was part of a man's daily dress.

These days, a hat of comparable quality costs anywhere from ten to 150 or more times as much. And hats are not mainstream anymore by any stretch of the imagination. So a hat that costs that much money is going to have a very limited audience, compared to the general population.

These days, a 'cheap' hat usually falls in that $30 - 60 range, as is usually made of wool. These are 'only' 10 to 20 times as much as the old days, but it is a reasonable amount for men who are making an impulse buy.

Wool hats can work either way, as far as leading to more expensive, better quality purchases. Yes, there are men who will move up, but there are also men who will see that their new wool hat looks like crap after they got caught in the rain and think that hats are not worth the money if they're going to look like this after such a short time, not realizing that they 'got what they paid for.'

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But what was the average wage then and now? It's all relative.

Changes in wages are related to inflation.

Another thing to consider in these times vs the "old days". Many of us who like and enjoy wearing hats have a great number of them. One of the reasons I can afford so many is Ebay, where I can get a nice vintage hat for anywhere from $35-150, and many of those are on the lower end of cost. The gents who wore hats in our grandparents and great-grandparents day likely had only 2-3 hats, certainly not as many as we have. Therefore, they would be willing to pay more for a nice hat to last longer. I bet most guys had a "beater" felt for everyday, a good hat for church and formal outings and maybe a straw or two for summer.

Edward said:

But what was the average wage then and now? It's all relative.

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Edward and turnofphrase, yes inflation is absolutely at work here, but the point is that inflation, combined with lack of a ready market, makes even the inflation-adjusted prices a non-starter for most males in today's world. That's why a cheaper hat is usually the way to go for most males.

And $162 is relatively cheap, or a starting point, these days for a new fur felt hat. Adjusted for inflation or not, it's still a lot of money for an item that is not mainstream.

hatophile said:

Another thing to consider in these times vs the "old days". Many of us who like and enjoy wearing hats have a great number of them. One of the reasons I can afford so many is Ebay, where I can get a nice vintage hat for anywhere from $35-150, and many of those are on the lower end of cost. The gents who wore hats in our grandparents and great-grandparents day likely had only 2-3 hats, certainly not as many as we have. Therefore, they would be willing to pay more for a nice hat to last longer. I bet most guys had a "beater" felt for everyday, a good hat for church and formal outings and maybe a straw or two for summer.

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Yes, there are certainly different types of hat people here. There are the collectors you mention, who have what I would consider large numbers of hats, and there are guys who have a smaller number that are worn with much more regularity, mimicking the old days scenario you pointed out. And everyone has their own thresh holds on sheer numbers of hats, and what they are willing to pay for them.

I started out with a Stetson (I don't know what kind) fur felt hat. I bought the hat without knowing much, but it looked and fit better than the wool hat that I was planned on buying (I guess the salesperson did their job). I still use this as my dress hat. I then bought an Akubra Federation IV deluxe, as my everyday hat. This hat is so much more comfortable to wear than the Stetson is. It is sad to say that my everyday hat is nicer than my dress hat haha. Anyway, I would hate to get stuck in the rain or accidentally disform a wool hat, when any of that happens to my Akubra I re-bash it, let it dry, and it looks as good as new. It is definitely worth the money