Today we’d like to introduce you to John and Mandy Larson.
Hi John and Mandy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi, my name is John. My wife Mandy and I are the owners and inventors of Les Giddings Hat Hangers. I’ve always liked collecting hats but hated trying to find a way to show them off or store them. The only option really was to use multiple hooks screwed to the wall. This posed problems because it was always misshaping my hats to the point I couldn’t wear them again. So basically, I would buy some hats just to hang on the wall and use other hats for daily use that would sit on the counter or my dresser. The other problem was that I had to put holes in my walls for hanging the hooks used to store my hats. Whenever I wanted to move it I either had holes in the wall or I had to patch, sand and paint my wall to keep it looking nice. I finally stopped buying hats to show off because they would eventually end up in a stack in the closet and I would forget I even had them. After scouring the internet for weeks trying to find something that would work I finally decided the product that I wanted wasn’t out there. I decided to finally try and make my own. And after a couple of years and hundreds and hundreds of designs, materials and mock-ups I finally had what I wanted.
The criteria that I was working with was:
#1. It had to keep the shape of the hat. I didn’t want to keep wrecking hats
#2. It had to be hidden behind the hat because I only wanted people to see the hats
#3. It had to be super easy to mount on the wall.
#4. It had to be removable without damage to the walls.
#5. I wanted it to be repositionable in case I mounted it crooked.
#6. I wanted a design that even if it was a little crooked you wouldn’t notice it because it was hidden.
#7. I wanted a renewable material.
#8. It had to be very affordable.
#9. It had to be of a size and shape that didn’t cost a lot of money in shipping.
#10. It had to work on almost every single size and shape of hat out there.
#11. It had to be useable for “show” hats as well as everyday hats.
#12. It had to be innovative and unique to everything else out there.
As you can see I had quite the list of challenges ahead of me. But the final version of Hat Hangers is something I am extremely proud of and I am happy to say that I met every objective that I set out to do. When I first started designing Hat Hangers I had some of the most complex, interesting and crazy ideas imaginable. Not to mention what would have been incredibly expensive to produce and sell. For every version, I made I would work on finding alternative ways to scale it down little by little to meet my 12 criteria. The final result is something so simplistic that most people don’t see past the incredible amount of complex work that went into them.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We have been extremely fortunate that Les Giddings Hat Hangers have allowed Mandy to leave the security of her job and work at home full time. The COVID pandemic was both a blessing and a curse to us. We saw an incredible surge of traffic during the lockdown but we also had supply issues the same as everyone else. Before Mandy was able to leave her job we didn’t have enough time in the day to meet the demand that we were facing. We would both wake up at 6am and go to work, arrive home around 8pm from our jobs and start making Hat Hangers until 1 or 2am. We also worked on them all day on the weekends. It feels like we went an entire year without sleep!
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Les Giddings?
Hat Hanger was the original name of the company. It wasn’t very original, catchy or trademarkable. We are in the process of renaming the company to Les Giddings. This is a combination of my grandfather’s first name and my grandmother’s maiden name. I wanted a name with meaning to it and that kept me grounded. My grandparents were incredibly loving, compassionate and hard-working. A farmer and a one-room school teacher from South Dakota, they helped instill incredible values and ethics in me. That’s what Les Giddings is all about.
Pricing:
- $23.99 10 Pack of White Winter
- $24.99 10 Pack of Black Barnwood
- $24.99 10 Pack of Blue Line
Contact Info:
- Email: sales@hat-hanger.com
- Website: www.hat-hanger.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/originalhathanger/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HatHanger/
