Most days, when I believe in something big, I’m full speed ahead. But when it came to launching our wholesale division, I moved more cautiously.
I wasn’t scared or hesitant about the idea, I just didn’t know how our small team could handle it with all the hats we wear (sorry, had to). I also wasn’t confident about being on the hook with other businesses if we didn’t have a totally solid plan and our supply chain down pat.
Between tariffs and our wild political climate, this was something I had to really consider. As a buyer and business owner myself, I know how much we rely on our vendors. I knew wouldn’t sleep if I couldn’t hold my end of the bargain after a retailer trusted their business with us.
That all changed last spring when we diversified our manufacturing. We spent a lot of time sniffing out new suppliers and by April I felt like we had a wide range of experts we could work with to produce products we were proud of and knew would deliver the goods – literally.
With that said, we are Flea Style. A huge part of our special sauce are our collected goods and handmade items. I knew we needed time to conceptualize and handmake hat accessories (hello, domino pins, dice pins and hand-dipped feathers) as well as collect thousands and thousands of vintage offerings from brooches to matchbooks.
Last spring, we made the commitment to launch wholesale by this fall. We got to work on everything from wool and straw hat orders to custom designing cool trucker hats (just wait until you see these embroidered designs). I got busy hitting the fields for old pins, brooches and decorative pieces we could rework into unique embellishments.
This summer, we hired help for our buying team to create our catalog of SKUs, build our wholesale website and prep all the products. Mind you, none of us are formally trained in wholesale, so lots of time was spent researching (Alexa, where do you design custom shipping boxes?), phoning friends and testing things in the office.
Once those things were in line, we spent weeks designing our booth space to look, feel and inspire like our Flea Style stores. From a vintage iron hat bar to old Turkish rugs, the space looks stunning and nothing like a tradeshow booth.
Although hats are the obvious main item in our wholesale mix, I was passionate that if we were going to put our hat in this world, we needed to be unique. With our new book How to Style a Hat coming out, I wanted to create hat styling kits and pin kits that allow customers to decorate dreamy hats from home with the same unique accessories we carry at The Original Hat Bar.
I've wanted to make these kits for years but the way we wanted to curate them was time and labor consuming. The book's spring arrival finally pushed us to take the leap and start.
I won’t give away too much, but the book is designed around eight themes to help readers decorate hats inspired by those vibes (think maximalist or nature lover). I thought it would be fun to make kits that lean into these widely-loved styles so people could deck out their hat to fit their personality or look.
These kits aren’t in the marketplace, so we needed to create a new product and figure out how to make it. It took the past year to land on the right packaging, items, labels and assembly practices. I still spend hours each week trying to collect items to put inside these special little boxes of hat joy.
I’m thrilled to say they turned out incredible and are beyond my wildest dreams. We’re launching with three hat styling kit themes – bohemian, rocker, Western – and I hope you love them. Each kit includes styling tips as well as feathers, hatbands, an Original Hat Bar bronze pin, old matchbook and vintage brooch I personally handpicked. They’re truly little labors of love and totally one-of-a-kind.
Over the past month, we’ve been focused on finalizing every detail for our wholesale market debut and tomorrow is the big day! If you happen to be at the show, I hope you’ll stop by and say hello (we’re booth #111309 on the 11th floor). If you’re a buyer and interested in wholesale with us but can’t make market, visit here for all the details!
Once market is over, we’re launching our hat styling kits and pin kits online for y’all to enjoy them too. I will share them as soon as they’re live. Can’t wait!
Xoxo,
Brittany
