We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hayley Petrarca Emily Reichbach. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hayley Petrarca below.

Hi Hayley Petrarca, thanks for joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

Once we had this idea of “wide brim hats in Charleston”, we really had no idea how “serious” we’d have to take it just to try it out. We thought we’d dabble in the idea, and then commit. But quite the opposite had to happen just to be able to buy whole sale. That was our very first lesson. As we were researching hat styles, we looked at each other and said “I guess we gotta be all in!”. That was the day – November 22nd, 2022 – we chose to apply for an LLC which came with all sorts of other technicalities like applying for an EIN number, registering with the state and county, etc. To say it was overwhelming was an understatement. We didn’t even know yet if we could really pull it off. I believe what drove us was that challenge of doing something unknown, for representing women in small business, and truly enjoying the creativity side of making custom hats. From there, inventory came in, we played around with different fabrics, cords, and feathers and decided we needed to have a pop-up event to drum up business. The first few months our pop ups were in gyms like F45 and HYLO, and at local restaurants and bars like Sharehouse and Uptown Social – we used our local connections to just get our name out there. We went to any farmers market we could get access to as well. With the help of good friends, local support, and social media slowly the word spread where stores like Veronica Beard on King Street and II Brunettes in Mount Pleasant were asking us to do pop ups in store. Putting time into our website has made the difference as well – we reach women and men from all ends of the country now who want a custom hat directly from the Holy City. It feels like a blur now. Slowly but surely we learned how to be strategic in where we placed pop-ups and how to advertise; we even realized private events were key to bringing the hat bar directly to the customer. It’s been a journey of figuring out as we go but I’d say deciding you’re all in is the most important step!

Hayley Petrarca, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Firstly, what we do is provide wide brim hats with endless possibilities of customizations. We bring our hat bar to pop ups and private events, along with having our own online store exclusively available on our website, offering pre designed and custom hat orders. Our business idea started after a trip to San Miguel, Mexico for wedding. These wide brim hats were so popular – we were seeing them everywhere, and each of our friends came back to the US with at least one. We thought, “wow, we could definitely do this in Charleston!” We like to say we provide the style and quality of a wide brim hat at an affordable cost – we want anyone to be able to access a hat to level up any outfit. What sets us apart from the rest is truly no hat is the same. We add personal touches in the form of charms, initial engravings, bible verses, quotes, and song verses. Customers have even brought their own items we incorporate into their hats. I believe we are most proud of how we interact and connect with our customers when we design their hats – we’ve made hats for special causes, patients battling cancer, helping a woman get her mojo back, or creating a memory from a special girls trip. It’s more than just designing a hat, and we feel that every day we do this. Along with a beautiful custom hat, we want to create a memorable, personal, and enjoyable experience.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We first focused on quality. We purchased a bunch of different options to test out quality and even had our friends try them out to get their opinions. We wanted something durable, light weight, and a breathable material to allow for all season wear in the lovely warmer weather the low country provides. We then focused on provided the true personal experience, and are diligent about efficient and effective communication. We found when people truly feel they are working a priority and special – it makes the process of customizing a hat that much more enjoyable. We are also very organized – we stay on top of each other, and we notate and track EVERYTHING. That helps us follow up with customers and collaborators in an appropriate time frame, and allows nothing to fall through the gaps. Customers notice those things.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Luckily our very own Emily is a social media wiz. She knew the importance of creating reels, how to tag certain people and accounts, and what to keep in mind when creating content. We started out by sharing our posts and stories to our own personal social media accounts as well as tagging friends in our posts to help create awareness. Any time we did events or did a collab with another local business we both pushed the social media advertising prior, during, and after an event. When we became more strategic with our events, the business names we were tagging also had a larger following which increased views and interest. We would notice after a pop up event, we’d get a stream of online orders due to new social media following. We also joined a small group of women-owned small business owners that support each other on the social media space which has been very helpful in increasing views and interactions. I will add we have not purchased any followers or have “fake accounts” following us. We wanted to stay authentic so every follower we have has been earned! We also believe the key is to use social media as a piece of our business and to not be solely dependent on it to be successful. We learned quickly we needed multiple avenues of reaching our customers, but social media surely does help!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.holycityhats.com
• Instagram: @holycityhats_chs