Product Innovation: The USB Fastener Hat
Musical artist Deaton Chris Anthony offers a branded hat that fastens via a USB.
You’ve heard of snapbacks, fitted caps, flex hats and strapbacks.
Now, there’s a dad hat that fastens via USB.
Photo from Deaton Chris Anthony. Find the hat here.
The stroke of creative genius comes from Los Angeles-based musical artist and fashion designer Deaton Chris Anthony. And candidly, I’m jealous: I wish I would have come up with the idea.
It’s a simple, but effective stroke of ingenuity.
When worn, the USB tucks into a small opening in the canvas or mesh cap, similar to how the extra slack of a strapback would. The closure tightens and loosens to various head sizes via a nylon pull fastener. Available in 11 colors, the “Nothing But Net” hat is the first cap ever to clasp via USB, according to Anthony. I couldn’t find evidence to contradict him – at least through my admittedly unscientific googling and searching of ASI’s ESP, a database of products from across the promotional products industry.
Photo from Deaton Chris Anthony. Find the hat here.
When not being worn, the USB can be removed from its slot and plugged in. A recent Vogue article noted that the teched-up headwear is an easy way for DJs and musical artists (or really anyone) to keep a fully loaded USB on them – a USB that features their creative work, ready for sharing. Certainly, Anthony had that in mind when he developed the USB cap.
Photo from Deaton Chris Anthony. Find the hat here.
“We’re using this hat as a tool to collaborate with other artists and also to be able to push merch within music forward,” Anthony told Vogue. “I think something that I’ve noticed since I started making music was realizing that the fashion side of the music industry, or culture and music in general, isn’t really hashed out. There’s way too much potential to really do cool things in fashion and music, because I do think that they are one-to-one.”
Beyond his USB hats, Anthony has a line of handmade branded merchandise that he sews together from various existing garments, like sweatshirts, to make new singular creations. The Vogue article has more on that if you’re interested, though I can’t say the styles resonate with me personally.
Still, I wanted to call the promotional products industry’s attention to the “Nothing But Net” hat for a variety of reasons. For starters, good old-fashioned inspiration! Seeing cool new products can spark imagination and help you come up with unique solutions of your own.
Second, because Anthony’s ambitious, creative merch efforts highlight the appetite among musical artists to grow their brands – and incomes – via merchandise sales. Promo distributors can help with this growing niche. The more novel, on-brand solutions promo pros come up with for artists, the better the chance the merch marketing will stand out and connect with audiences. That should lead to success for musical artists – and ad specialty distributors. So put your creative dad cap on, so to speak, and plug into fresh ideas for crafting can’t-miss product solutions and campaigns.