Stetson Nostalgia Discontinued?

[John in Covina]

No manufacturer will keep making a product which they see as not carrying enough demand.

There is an interesting look at this: Stetson made the Nostalgia but really did not support the product with much to spell out the idea of an open crown hat. I heard rumor / supposition that many at Stetson wanted it to fail as an open crown offering so they could continue just doing what they were doing.

The appeal of an open crown fedora is limited to those in the know as it were. It is a case of educating your customers. An educated customer will often step up in grade when making a purchase. Since 98% of the people that are coming for a first time purchase don't know bupkis about fedoras, fur felt, sweat bands, brim width, crown creases (bashes) they will know nothing about creasing the crown themselves and it will have no appeal to them or scare them away. "Why should i buy a hat I have to crease myself when there are all of these that have been done for me and look really crisp?"

For some if you said this is what your grandfather did it might intrigue them but most people know nothing and just want a hat like Charlie Sheen has.

5 second attention spans, sound bite lives and a need for ultimate convenience tends to point away from an open crown offering, unless they get educated.

 

[monbla256]

There is an interesting look at this: Stetson made the Nostalgia but really did not support the product with much to spell out the idea of an open crown hat. I heard rumor / supposition that many at Stetson wanted it to fail as an open crown offering so they could continue just doing what they were doing.

The appeal of an open crown fedora is limited to those in the know as it were. It is a case of educating your customers. An educated customer will often step up in grade when making a purchase. Since 98% of the people that are coming for a first time purchase don't know bupkis about fedoras, fur felt, sweat bands, brim width, crown creases (bashes) they will know nothing about creasing the crown themselves and it will have no appeal to them or scare them away. "Why should i buy a hat I have to crease myself when there are all of these that have been done for me and look really crisp?"

For some if you said this is what your grandfather did it might intrigue them but most people know nothing and just want a hat like Charlie Sheen has.

5 second attention spans, sound bite lives and a need for ultimate convenience tends to point away from an open crown offering, unless they get educated.

You hit the proverbial nail on the head. I'd venture a guess that "collectors" of Fedoras would constitute mabe 10% AT MOST of most current hat manufacturers market today and in today's retail world, that's not enough to cater to in offerings. If you want a "vintage" style of hat, buy vintage or go custom, but DON"T expect a modern manufacturer to provide you with one. JMHO

 

[Lefty]

I heard rumor / supposition that many at Stetson wanted it to fail as an open crown offering so they could continue just doing what they were doing.

So the people of RHE HatCo had a little sit-down and decided,

"Hey, those vintage guys are really giving us a hard time about an open-crown offering. Just to shut them up, let's design an open crown hat, set up a line just for that hat, distribute the hat to our retailers and, here's the kicker, not promote it at all. We'll just put it out there and let it die. Who cares if we lose money, we're a private corporation. That'll show those vintage hat guys to mess with us. Then, in a year or two, we'll really ruffle their feathers with this Stratoliner project, which will sell even fewer hats. Mwa Ha Ha! That will teach them to give us any input."

That started out as a joke, but I think I might believe it.

 

[Rick Blaine]

$150-$225 Contemporary VS. Vintage hats

Fact is, for that coin & w/ a bit of patience, I can still score a KILLER vintage, even in my 7 3/8 size, that is superior in every respect to today's products. End of story for this consumer.

 

[Jedwbpm]

I am once again going to harken back to my Liquor and Wine sales days. Bartenders did not want to learn the new mixed drink we came up with to sell Smirnoff. If it was up to them they would sell Bottled Bud only. Easy, fast, no classes to wash. It is hard to get a customer to work harder for the same money.

Jeff

 

[Not-Bogart13]

I think marketing and distribution may have held it back a bit. From shopping online, I found few vendors who carried it, mostly in only one color, with limited sizes. Most said very little about what the open crown concept was (some just showed the shaped photo, no description, which was misleading).

Also, I think the price was too high to get many buying. To the less informed buyer, an uncreased hat should cost less, not more, because it's not "done." Even I was foiled by the price, generally deciding (at several different times) that I could get something much better for a little more money, or something similar for less... even an open crown. Frankly, I think that did more to kill it than any other factor.

 

[rlk]

Getting hung up on the Open Crown here. Few hats in vintage time left the store as open crowns. It lends itself best to an actual store where it can be shown and creased by the retailer. Online requires more explanation or a buyer that either creases themselves or knows what to ask for. Even online a seller should have the capability to crease it before sending it out if desired.
The bigger point is why is this the only offering shaped or not with its crown dimensions? There must be 50+ offerings with a 4" front pinch crown in a choice of 2 creases. 1-2 % of the market wouldn't have any interest in a fuller crown option? Highly doubtful.

 

[John in Covina]

So the people of RHE HatCo had a little sit-down and decided, "Hey, those vintage guys are really giving us a hard time about an open-crown offering. Just to shut them up, let's design an open crown hat, set up a line just for that hat, distribute the hat to our retailers and, here's the kicker, not promote it at all. We'll just put it out there and let it die. Who cares if we lose money, we're a private corporation. That'll show those vintage hat guys to mess with us. Then, in a year or two, we'll really ruffle their feathers with this Stratoliner project, which will sell even fewer hats. Mwa Ha Ha! That will teach them to give us any input."
That started out as a joke, but I think I might believe it.

If you have worked for any fairly good sized companies what you find is that there usually is no 100% consensus on a lot of things. Something like this may have upset factions, departments or some managerial people. As someone elses pet project or as some experiment it may not receive the full support of some of the departments. Such as here the marketing department clearly did little to promote or educated the consumer. It could also be their marketing staff are clueless and have no concept of what to do.

Lots of companies have conflicts between departments, inner cliches and power struggles that interferes with actually getting the job done and done right. Many companies have a problem with communication that hampers productivity.

But here I think we can all say it was not the most masterful marketing campaign in history.

 

[The Wiser Hatter]

My feeling is Stetson must feel satisfied with their current sales. In the mass market their really isn't
A lot of competition with their products. The average man on the street knows the name even if they
Would never wear their product. They do not want to put the effort to develop a new hat wearing
Public. It will take effort to get men to start wearing hats again. The whole way of selling hats has been removed. Perhaps some other company will see the value of the effort.

 

[John in Covina]

One thing that we can compare at least a little bit is what the companies that handle an open crown hat will do to tell about it. David Morgan has several from Akubra that they sell and as part of their printed catalog and online catalog they go into some detail about the open crown and how to crease the crown.
An intro: http://www.davidmorgan.com/index.php?cPath=2_22_28
How to: http://www.davidmorgan.com/bashinghat.html?cPath=2_22_28
More info: http://www.davidmorgan.com/indy_bash.html

You can see that it's a lot more info than what you need for a pre-creased hat.

 

[Fletch]

You know, that raises a couple of questions. For example, what level of annual sales would be required to have kept it going, assuming their other dress hats require similar levels? How many non-western dress hats do they sell in total each year, and since most of us rarely see anyone else with a hat on their head, who the heck is buying them? [huh]

Inquiring minds want to know!

Cheers,
Tom

Some of the info has to be considered proprietary. Especially so since Hatco is a privately held company. if they insisted on moving 3,000 Nostalgias a year, or even 300,000, there's little we can do to convince them except cough up the cash. (I did.)

 

[DavidVillaJr]

Fact is, for that coin & w/ a bit of patience, I can still score a KILLER vintage, even in my 7 3/8 size, that is superior in every respect to today's products. End of story for this consumer.

Yeah, that's what I felt too, until I couldn't GET the vintage hats I wanted for the prices I was willing to pay.

Every bid on eBay wasn't enough, or the hat was yet another brown fedora, or a stingy - of which I have plenty of each.

I finally said "the heck with it" and ponied up for the Stetson through qualityhats - for less than my unsuccessful eBay bids, and with no "hidden issues" (mothing, creases, stains, popped stitches, pen marks, etc. that get ignored or missed when sellers are listing) and with no shipping charges.

So, some pluses, and the hat is REALLY nice, so, no real minuses.

dv

 

[T Rick]

Okay, this from the closed Stratoliner thread: (Gents, PLEASE let's not go into the beaten to death Stratoliner discussion here, this thread is on the discontinuation of the Nostalgia, and I post this quote only because it is so germane to the discussion).

Out of all profiles that we have the 10 is the most popular with retailers and consumers and the 01 not to far behind. I'll give you a guess to the profile that sells the least. We discontinued the Nostalgia due to low volume. In the 3 or so years that it was offered it never sold more than 300 units a year. The last 2 years I don't think it broke 200 units. The Royston a silk finish open crown Dobbs sold even less and was discontinued after 1 year. From a business standpoint to make the Stratoliner a success it makes sense to offer it in a profile that will sell. That said, we are willing to make any profile a retailer requests provided they meet our minimum order which is 48 per color. I think in the past we even lowered it for a retailer here to 24 on a group buy, but nothing came of it, because in the end what everyone wanted was a little bit different from each other.

So it would appear, under a thousand units of the Nostalgia out there floating about. What do you know, I now have a semi-rare hat.

I do think the open crown which is the reason for much of it's appeal here on the board, was also much of the reason for it's demise. My local Hatter, Henry The Hatter didn't even carry it (of course they could order it). I wish instead of killing it off, Stetson had simply switched to selling it pre-creased to see what the market did then (profile still seems to be unique in their line). They have so many models and colors, it would be nice to see less lookalikes and more diversity (to include a truer vintage proportion hat like the Nostalgia) in the lineup.

 

[monbla256]

[QUOTE
I do think the open crown which is the reason for much of it's appeal here on the board, was also much of the reason for it's demise. QUOTE]

I think you stated it all very well. This Forum and it's participants are a VERY SMALL portion of HATCO's market and as such could NOT keep them in business. They have to look at the proverbial BIG picture.

 

[bradbraden]

I just had to get one of these, so I scored one off ebay. I almost went with the suggestion of a couple of you to go w/the Akubra fed 4. I really appreciate the input but I saw this new in my size,price was right so everything lined up right. Anyway it just arrived today its really nice. Playing with the crease right now, thanks again for your input.

 

[Tone]

Hopefully Stetson's been listening and are pulling the Nostalgia to gear up for the release of a better balanced open-crowned model.

 

[bradbraden]

Hopefully Stetson's been listening and are pulling the Nostalgia to gear up for the release of a better balanced open-crowned model.

I hope so Tone, but I'll tell you this is one heckuva hat. I wonder how it would look bashed indy style in the mink color.

 

[Tone]

Probably like a Last Crusade hat, at least. But - I see you picked one of these up. ;-) Whatchoo got on your Nostalgia over there for us to admire? :-D Pics coming?

 

[bradbraden]

Ok, here it is. I looked at MK's and Rodkins crease in the Nostalgia w/pics thread to use as a guide.

 

[danofarlington]

Ok, here it is. I looked at MK's and Rodkins crease in the Nostalgia w/pics thread to use as a guide.

Excellent look to that hat on you.