We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stacy & Jesse Raymond a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stacy & Jesse, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I think to be successful, first and foremost is hard work. You have to put in the time and no matter how hard things get, and they will get hard, don’t give up. If it’s something that you love and believe in, then it’s worth it. We literally started from the ground up, with very little money, just each other. But we have worked hard and pushed each other to make a product that we are proud of, and that our customers are proud to own. It truly makes us happy when our customers are happy.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We are Jesse & Stacy Raymond. We have two children, ages 18 and 16. We live in Hico, TX. We got into the hat business kinda by chance, and a push from Stacy. We built our house in Hico as a family, but I unfortunately hurt my back and couldn’t work, after years of shots and therapy that didn’t work, we where basically broke, and I had had enough. I had to have surgery. After years of feeling helpless and like I had been a burden I needed to do something. Stacys showed me a picture of a hat that had been burned and said “ you can make something like this” and she told me to try it. I started burning hats in bed right after my surgery. I’ve always been artistic, thanks to my mom, but I was a bit skeptical about putting art onto hats. But I tried it and it turned out really good, so we tried making some for a craft fair and sold out of all of our hats! From there it just kept growing and we tried to keep adapting and constantly using every social media platform to get our brand out there. We eventually partnered up with Pearls Saloon in The Fort Worth Stockyards, we have a custom hand burned hat bar that we operate out of there, we are planning on being there every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And we are currently building a mobile hat bar trailer, which we are hoping will make our lives a little easier.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

It most definitely did. I started out just burning hats in bed after my back surgery, and eventually got to the point where I was overwhelmed and couldn’t handle it on my own. Stacy had to quit her job, and basically became a business woman/ owner/ artist, almost overnight. None of this would have happened without her. She runs our social media, deals with customers, orders, booking, advertising…. For real she does it all. I think one of our biggest milestones was partnering up with Pearls saloon, it has really helped get our name out there, we also recently did a private corporate party for Ariat Equestrian. We burned and customized 25 hats in 3 hours, it was pretty exciting!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think that we are unique in the hat industry. I know that there are many other people who burn hats, but what we do I think is truly unique in the sense that we work really closely with our customers and I freehand all of my work. You can come into Pearl’s saloon on any day that we’re there and watch us work! We also try really hard to keep our prices reasonable. We see so many people selling burnt hats that are so overpriced that it’s outrageous. I want people to be able to afford our hats !

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.thevelvetfoxcompany.com
• Instagram: the_velvet_fox_co
• Facebook: https://Www.facebook.com/TheVelvetFoxCo
• Other: TikTok- the_velvet_fox_co

Image Credits

Lane Ryan Photography
Brooke Wilhelm- model
Brenna Govea- model