Hats
“If you want to get ahead, get a hat” the old saying went. These days hats are worn much less formally, and it would be easy to write off the hat business but with 61 million results on Google for a simple search on Hats there is obviously still a lot of mileage left in this business.
Whether you choose to sell baseball caps, formal ladies hats, top hats, or even bowler hats there are markets for you. Even Top hats have their place at formal English Weddings. If you want to be involved in the fashion industry but have struggled to break in then this could be the business for you.
Have a look at www.hats.com to get a feel for the breadth of lines that it is possible to carry. This will also give you a good idea of prices, which are not cheap!
I don’t recommend that you try to copy hats.com or the high-street retailer “lids” when you first start. It would be better to pick a niche and do it well, and then expand into other lines as you develop your understanding of the business.
I said above that there are 60 million results on Google for a search on the word “hats” here are some of the sub-groups broken down by number of results: -
Stetson 4910000
Baseball Caps 2630000
Peaked Caps 1060000
Casual ladies hats 990000
Bowler hat 884000
Formal ladies hats 737000
For baseball caps, I will assume that we are not talking about customising, which is a different business altogether and is more akin to a T-shirt business than what I am thinking of here. Where baseball caps are sold pre-printed they become a product that is sold to someone who wants a baseball cap as opposed to something that is sold to promote a business. Once you have chosen the kid of hats that you want to sell, you will need to think about your marketing.
Places you could try to market your hats include: -
Ebay
Website
Other Shops
Direct Mail
Ebay has almost 70,000 items listed under a search for “hats”, if you try to narrow this with broad categories then we can find 15,000 under men’s accessories. Searching for “bowler hat” only brings in 31 results and “Stetson” about 230. “Baseball cap” conversely accounts for 2300 results. This doesn’t mean that it’s easier to sell bowler hats than baseball caps, whether you sell a few baseball caps in a huge market or a few bowler hats in a small market; sales are sales thank you.
We already covered the mind boggling statistics for hats if you search on Google. Face the fact that you are not likely to make the number 1 spot and work on promoting your site. If I can get 4500 people through my website from scratch in 4 months then you can do the same and some of them will buy your products. I spend very little money on marketing with my biggest investment being time, but if you are prepared to experiment with ads on different sites you should find online advertising that is cost effective, and if not then try offline.
Whether you are selling fine millinery, or baseball caps you can probably persuade other store owners to carry your goods. Window displays might just look better in your top-hats, bowler hats or baseball caps and of course you can provide stock on a sale or return basis.
Direct mail has been the mainstay of the clothing business for decades. Sears and co are credited with the first major mail order catalogue using the US railway system to take orders for household goods and clothing but the concept still works. You don’t need every customer who gets a copy of your catalogue (brochure/leaflet) to buy a hat. You don’t even need 10% to buy a hat in fact if you cut out the postage by hand delivering you can probably afford to only sell to about 1/3rd of a percent of all the people you mail. That means drop 1500 leaflets and sell 5 hats, which might sound like a lot of work but you have to remember many of these folk will show their catalogues to friends and family, some of them will buy more than once and of course once you have their details you can contact them by mail, phone, email etc periodically to push for those extra sales. My father just dropped over 2000 leaflets by hand with help from his wife in less than a week in his spare time, so even without repeat sales you could be looking at 25 plus sales a month. As repeat business grows you can build a healthy income but you will have to do the legwork.
There are other approaches that might work, particularly party planning for ladies hats, working with dress designers etc.
www.alibaba.com has over 10 listings for hats, and the top few are not baseball caps! If you want something special like a top hat or bowler hat then try to find European manufacturers. They will be more expensive but you not only get great quality, you get the perception of great quality from your customers. Equally if you want to get involved in formal ladies hats (millinery) then try to work with local hat designers, or design your own if you are gifted that way.
The phrase “as mad as a hatter” comes from the mercury poisoning that hatters used to get by absorbing mercury through their skin when handling felt. Looking at the demand for hats on the internet I would say you’d have to be mad not to look at it seriously.