SoJones Interview: Epic Headwear Company Flat Fitty

More Than Just About Hats but the Bugatti of Hats

When is a hat more than just a hat? When it’s the Bugatti of hats. Founder of Flat Fitty, Tian Waters, started the brand back in the early 2000s with the intention of giving customers the best quality hat that they could muster, and almost ten years later, he’s still on that same mission.

With deliveries to more than 80 countries since the company’s inception, they are definitely well on their way to making a huge dent in the hat world, but the goal is to produce quality not quantity. That single mantra has allowed the brand to thrive and grow in a crowded marketplace and is still at the forefront of marks mind as they usher in a new era of Flat Fitty headwear. 2013 is poised to be a big year for the brand with some huge partnerships and a few lined up, so be prepared.

How did your partnership with the Jabbawockeez come about?

We’ve been working with them for almost five or six years back, and they came to us for private label headwear when they wanted to get some stuff done. Flat Fitty has been in business for ten years doing private label headwear, and we’ve delivered to 800 brands in 80 countries, and they’re one of the brands that we work with.

So, when they were getting their new Luxor deal, which kind of kicked up over the holidays, when I think they signed a six-year deal with Luxor and a four-year extension, they needed some product and they came to us because the stuff they were getting was kind of low-quality, and they wanted some high-quality stuff. So they approached me and asked if we wanted to get them some premium goods, and it was like ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it.’ So, that’s kind of how it came out. It came from product and realizing that we’re kind of on the same path.

They’re all about quality and doing s*** right and we’re all about the same thing, so we kind of put our heads together and asked whether there was more to this relationship than getting you guys headwear. He approached the team over there and the team said yeah, so it was pretty easy. They knew about us, they knew who we were, and we appreciate them and everything they’ve done. They’re global, man. Their following overseas is just epic, so it’s kind of just a natural fit for our brand to associate with them.

At the end of this collaboration with them as your brand ambassadors, what do you hope to have fulfilled?

What they’re going to get out of it from us is quality headwear, and that’s what’s lacking in the industry. We kind of look at ourselves as the Bugatti of headwear. Yeah, there are probably a lot of Hondas and a lot of BMWs, but there are very few Bugattis or Ferraris out there, and that’s kind of what we are. So, first and foremost, we hope they’re happy with the headwear that they get. As far as what the relationship brings to them, we do have a pretty good reach.

We’ve delivered to over 80 countries, so we kind of understand the global view because we’re originally a Hong Kong corporation. So we lived overseas for a long time, and we kind of know the international markets rather than just here domestically in the US. So at the end of the day, we hope they’re happy with the headwear, and we hope they’re happy with what we can do for them on the social media platform.

What do we take out of it? The Jabbawockeez have a big reach. They’re big in Southeast Asia, Europe, South America, and those are markets that we have distributors in. So, being able to associate with those guys in those regions really helps the brand show that it’s making the right moves with quality groups and quality people.

How would you describe the quality that Flat Fitty brings to the headwear game?

Well, there’s a good group of people over here, and what they’re all about first and foremost is quality. Quality life, quality people, quality product. It’s kind of disheartening when I walk in the mall and you see product that’s selling for forty bucks and you know d*** well it’s not worth forty bucks, but yet it’s that brand that you want to pay for.

So, hopefully what we’re doing for the industry is that we’re bringing that platform, and you kind of look at us like a canvas. If you look at Flat Fitty and say I want to collaborate with Flat Fitty because it’s the best and I want to put my name on the best, it’s kind of like paints a beautiful picture. And at the end of the day, you don’t mind dropping 30 or 40 dollars on a beautiful picture rather than feeling like you got squeezed on that one, but it was the brand that you wanted to be associated with.

We kind of look at it like there’s a void of headwear. This is Facetime era and people should really be looking at their face and going ‘ People are looking at my eyes and I’m on Skype all the time wearing a hat.’ We put so much emphasis on shoes and how people look at footwear, but it’s like how many times do you look down at people’s feet? You’re always looking at someone’s head, so your head should be perfect and that cap should be perfect.

How do you plan to dominate the domestic market in the same way you have with the international market?

We’re so used to doing international business and probably about 80% of our revenue is overseas right now. With the US it becomes more about who’s messing with the product, who’s wearing it, what videos are you in, and while that’s good to a certain extent, you want to be associated with the right hip-hop guys and the right artists.

You also want to protect your brand and make sure that anybody that’s messing with it understands the value of it. I think what’s conscious for us right now is putting on the right people and making sure that we’re just not trying to get the brand out there to everybody, but instead making like if someone wants to mess with us, we want to know if they’re worthy of us and are we worthy of them.

It’s kind of like a two-way street of us getting what we’re all about. We want brand ambassadors that are promoting the brand and they understand the brand and what makes us different. We want people to treat us like a Bugatti.

When you’re sitting in a Bugatti, you know that feels right and it’s luxury. So when you put a hat on, if somebody’s first takeaway is that it’s cool and they’ll mess with it, that’s not what we’re looking for. We want somebody to be like ‘D*** what’s this all about. I’m down with this.’ We want to partner with the right people domestically and bring the right people to the brand to support it.

Images via Tygereye Ent. 

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