Dynasty hits paydirt with Manitoba curling hats
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2019 (2430 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Dynasty Apparel has done a brisk business in hats over the past week.
The company sold around 2,500 of its Team Manitoba hats designed for the Tim Hortons Brier, according to co-owner Faron Asham, and that’s a conservative estimate as they are still selling well.
The baseball-style hats are made in Brandon and feature a solid black base embroidered with a yellow buffalo.
Dynasty is currently in the first year of a four-year deal to design and produce the clothing for Curling Canada, including the jerseys and hats worn at the Brier. The company is also co-owned by Colin Hodgson, who played lead on Mike McEwen’s Manitoba squad.
“We made about seven hats for Team McEwen, for the players and coaches and thought maybe we would be able to get a rush from the family and friends of the teams, but it’s really accelerated and really exploded.”
The next best-selling hat is the Team Wild Card hat, which has the design of a white skull wearing a joker’s cap above the brim. Dynasty has only sold 13 of that design so far, so the popularity of the Team Manitoba hat far outstrips the other hats.
The timing was right with the Brier coming to town, he said. Fans have also been looking for something a little bit more stylish.
“With us having the on-ice apparel and adding a little bit of more creative design to the jerseys, the hats then rode the coattails of that and having the whole team wearing our product was a boon in the exposure.”
Inside the production facility, two machines work 20 hours per day embroidering the hats. A needle pierces the area above the brim with a piece of coloured string to draw the yellow buffalo design. Dozens of nearly finished hats sit on a table in front of the embroidery machines.
The machines work from 7 a.m. until 3 a.m. the next day, when they get shut down for maintenance. Dynasty can make between 400 and 500 hats on a typical day.
Asham said their biggest problem for the moment is keeping enough black hats and yellow thread in stock. The company could make more than two at once, but wants to ensure the quality of each one.
“I think it means there’s an opportunity to introduce some more of the designs, some more of the flair I guess. … I think this certainly supports that concept.”
The Brier boost has given Dynasty Apparel its best year yet and most productive in terms of the number of hats produced.
“The plans for the future are to get all the online orders and all the walk-up crowd over the next two weeks (done), but our staff have been working very diligently to meet the production needs,” Asham said. “We’re going sit down and have a strategy session on where we go from here.”
» dmay@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @DrewMay_