We recently connected with Kay McKenzie Sam Daniels and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kay McKenzie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Sam and I both had regular jobs up until we opened up our shop in July 2021. During that year leading up to opening our doors we were both working full time as well as building our Hatmaking business on the side. We were spending countless hours working and were both exhausted during that time. When we finally opened our shop Sam had quit his full time job to run the shop and I was still working part time at my job as well as the hat shop. Within the first week of being open we realized we could both be working at the hat shop full time and it was an exciting step in our lives. Since then we have both been working full time at the hat shop and have even been able to bring a part time employee. Running a business has been challenging for both of us as we would rather be on the creative side fully, however there has definitely been a learning curve to figuring out all of the logistical sides of the business. I would say we are still both extremely grateful and feel very lucky to be our own bosses. To be able to manage ourselves and express ourselves creatively for our work makes all the challenging aspects of owning a business worth it in our eyes.

Kay McKenzie, 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?

I got my degree in Landscape Architecture and Sam has a past experience in sales and marketing. I most recently had a small business selling metalwork art that I had been making for a few years. I had always wanted to own my own creative business full time and had started to experiment with making hatbands. Sam and I both had the idea to start making hats and started playing around with it in my metal shop. We recognized there could be a good market in steamboat for custom western hats and started getting some interest through our instagram page. We feel that we have really had an exciting and quick come up and were able to get our shop open in downtown Steamboat Springs. We have loved developing our brand and our client base and are excited to see where things go from here.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Instagram has been really a great resource for us even now with our shop open. Though in the beginning we were getting orders only through instagram, I would say most of our orders are now done in shop so that we can get a proper fit. I would still say however that most people hear of us through instagram and will come from all over colorado to come get fit and design their own hat in shop. We definitely get a lot of walk in traffic now to our shop which is nice and a lot of our in town business comes from word of mouth and our current clients sending us new referrals.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think our relationships with our clients is what helps most to maintain our reputation within our market. We work really hard to make each customer’s experience special and specific to what they are looking for. We also want to make sure it fits just right and that it ends up being their dream hat so we will work extra hard to make sure that is the case. We also make a promise to each customer to take care of their hat through the life of the hat and make any changes to it in the future which helps to keeps a good ongoing relationship.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.steamboathatter.com
• Instagram: steamboathatter
• Facebook: Facebook.com/SteamboatHatter

Image Credits
John Lanterman (black and white photos) Jesse Brucato (color photos)