In 2015, four friends in Arizona - Dave Dickert, Josh Tabaj, Tim Welch and Samuel Coil - made a single hat. They branded a leather patch with a hot iron, cut it by hand with a knife, sewed it onto a cap, and delivered it to a brewery in South Dakota. That one patch, meant to show where someone was born and raised, became the whole idea: a hat as a badge of place.
One state-specific patch grew into coverage of all 50. It did not come easy. Before the company automated anything, the founders felt every scorching brand, every precise cut, every new order. Branded Bills says it was the first to create leather patch hats for all 50 states - a milestone earned the manual way.
By 2017, all four founders had gone full-time and the company leaned into customization, letting customers make products truly their own. In 2018 it brought headwear production in-house, trading convenience for control over quality and speed. In 2020 it added an apparel line and supported frontline responders during the pandemic.
The climb was not a straight line. A growth plateau in 2021 pushed the team to refine rather than simply push harder - sharpening product, brand and operations before the next stretch. Along the way the company reports it has sold more than $50 million of product and grown to roughly 200 people, all from a start of about $4,000.
