Time to share some #BrandLove! Today we’re chatting to Sadiq from LA based hat brand, Misallati Hat Club. As many of you know there’s a lot of love for hats in the Kitsch.inc house and five-panel hats are always number one (unless it’s too windy) so when we stumbled upon Misallati via Natelle Draws Stuff’s Instagram, it was naturally love at first sight. Focusing in on perfecting just a handful of products has opened the creative doors for Sadiq and his team, designing five panel hats and Bum Bags filled with 90s nostalgia, pop culture fandom and more abstract, slick styles that wouldn’t look out of place on the shelves of Liberty or your local skate store. This is an awesome handmade brand, now let’s find out more about the business….
Tell us a little about yourself and how the Misallati Hat Club started.
My name is Sadiq Misallati and I started Misallati Hat Club 3 years ago when on a whim I decided to learn sewing hats. It was a hobby at first but then I quickly became obsessed with trying to make the perfect 5 panel hat. After about a year of making hats every single day for probably 8-10 hours per day (plus my full time job) I decided the hats were good enough to sell.
Why did you specifically choose to focus on 5 panel hats?
They were the easiest to sew with my original plastic Janome home machine. As I upgraded my equipment little by little I was able to learn more hat styles. I’m partial to making five panels even though growing up I hated wearing them. They were always too small for my giant noggin. I developed 3 different patterns for different sized heads seeing as we’re not all built the same.
We absolutely love your collaboration projects recently, how did that get started?
We’ve been blessed with the awesome collabs we’ve done. Our biggest collabs came from commenting on Instagram photos and taking it from there. We are currently in collaboration with Vapor95.com an awesome vaporwave and meme inspired clothing company.
What part does social media and digital marketing play in your business?
Social media, Instagram and Etsy in particular, are probably the only reason I have any sales at all. The hashtag is a pretty powerful marketing tool.
What are your main sources of inspiration?
My Mom Karen is my main source of inspiration. She runs a successful longarm quilting business called Cosmic Quilting (@cosmicquilting on Instagram). Her work ethic is very inspirational and the variety of different fabrics I was exposed to was instrumental in moulding our style. My Grandma Kathleen is also very inspirational to me. She works every day at the quilting studio and teaches me new things every time we hang out.
What tips would you give to someone new to handmade business?
You have to be willing to put in the time to make your business successful. I would wake up at 5 to get as much sewing done possible before my 2-10 pm cooking shift. Then get home and sew until midnight. I did this every single day for a year and now I sew hats full time! It was worth it.
Who are your favourite Etsy sellers at the moment?
Natelle Draws Stuff is the coolest Etsy shop in my opinion. The animal designs are amazing and the amount of charitable organizations they donate to is very inspirational! My second favorite is called Meatstain! It’s a shop with cool music related clothing and we also make their hats!
How awesome was that? We hope you’ve discovered a few great new handmade brands to check out. You can find Misallati Hat Club on their Etsy, Instagram and their personal website. Stay tuned for more interviews of this nature, if you can think of a brand that you think we should feature, drop us a comment or a tweet @Kitschinc.
Co-Creator @wearefoodscouts & @KitschInc. Digital Marketing & Creative Direction. Illustration, writing, creativity & style. Fan of films, TV, cartoons, colourful hair & clean beauty. Blogger since 2009.
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