The End of US Manufacturing is Nigh: New Era's Outsourcing and How We Got Here

Note: Somehow the text color is messed up; I will try to fix it at some point.

Once upon a time, New Era Cap Company was synonymous with American manufacturing. However, slowly since the 1990s, New Era's American manufacturing began to slowly disappear piece by piece. How did this happen? How did we get here?

The First Step

Let's go back to the early 90s. New Era's then-biggest competitor in headwear was Sports Specialties, a company driven by the business savvy of David Warsaw, the man who invented modern sports licensing. Sports Specialties had entered the headwear fray in 1983 and became a powerful force on a very short period of time. Instead of using American manufacturing (which was still common at the time for headwear), they went with a South Korean-based company called "YoungAn Hat Co.", who had their name behind the Sports Specialties label. YoungAn was a South Korean-based private label manufacturer. Soon, big brands at the time such as Starter and then New Era came knocking. New Era used YoungAn's Korean and Costa Rican manufacturing for some snapbacks and an NFL line in the early 90s. This was New Era's first time dabbling in overseas manufacturing. New Era then used YoungAn's US-based operation for MLB caps into the mid 90s.

When YougAn's Winslow, AZ-based plant closed, New Era opened two plants in Alabama and ended their relationship with YoungAn. In the early 2000s, we began to see some "fashion" caps being manufactured in China and some adjustable caps being made in Bangladesh, however, the vast majority of New Era's product was made domestically. 

The Dominoes Begin To Fall

The fist domino fell in late 2009, when it was announced that the plant in Jackson, AL. would be closing in early 2010. Then just a few months later, it was announced that the Demopolis, AL plant would also close. This came after New Era was weighing whether they would close the Demopolis or Derby, NY plants. They ultimately went with keeping Derby open due to it having the longest-tenured employees, as the Derby plant had been open since the 1960s. While the Derby plant had always been New Era's primary US factory, it wasn't without it's share of incidents, including one in 2001 when New Era was accused of sweatshop working conditions at the plant. In 2013, 75 workers at the Derby plant were laid off during a "workforce reduction". There were hopes that the laid off workers would be rehired, but that didn't happen.

Once the Alabama plants closed, imported caps became commonplace, and for those like me that wanted to wear what the players wear, riffling through the hat racks at your local hat store/sports apparel store to find USA-made caps became standard procedure.

Enter Trump

During the first Trump administration, the first big wave of tariffs in 2018 disproportionately affected baseball cap manufacturers. This lead to New Era CEO Chris Koch himself sending a letter to Robert Lighthizer, Trump's then-US Trade Representative pleading to have headwear removed from the tariff list, and he hinted at the closure of the Derby plant when he said "If the tariffs on headwear go into effect, the new costs will force us to make immediate and significant cuts to our US operations, including workforce reductions. So, the tariffs will backfire: having little-to-no impact on our Chinese suppliers while threatening the very kind of US-based manufacturing jobs the Administration says it’s trying to protect."  That same year, New Era had even posted a video of Koch making a cap at the Derby plant himself. And sure enough, the closing of the Derby plant was announced later that year. I have gone into that whole story before, so I won't go into detail further about the Derby plant closure other than to mention that it caused a political brouhaha in New York state with Republicans blaming Democrats for high taxes in the state and Democrats blaming the Trump administration's tariffs. Tax incentives that were created to help keep the Derby plant open had also recently expired.

Now what I do find interesting here is the Koch family's large support of the Republican Party despite their family's business being negatively affected (in their own words) by tariffs. Below is a look at New Era's political donations.

Donation history via the "Goods Unite Us" app.

Now I'm curious as to why they donate so much to current Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Being that he is based out of Florida, I assume that Rubio must have some kind of helping hand in New Era's operations there such as New Era's 5th & Ocean apparel company and their current MLB on-field cap manufacturing operation. I don't know if it's due policies championed by Rubio or if he personally played some kind of role with New Era, but Florida seems to be on Koch's mind these days, as he just recently made a rather large purchase there.

The Death Throes

Some may be wondering if New Era may ever bring back US manufacturing. After all, New Era is doing just fine. And surprisingly, Koch can't seem to let go of the Derby plant buildings. However, I have found out through an anonymous source that New Era plans on asking MLB to end its policy on made in USA headwear for player/on-field personnel during their next contract negotiations, which would mean the end of New Era's long tradition of American manufacturing. As of right now, things aren't looking to good to those of us that prefer American-made baseball caps. New Era also supposedly has plans to expand manufacturing into other countries such as Mexico, which ironically has been delayed due to tariffs. All we can do at this point is hope for a miracle and that MLB holds steady on their USA-made headwear policy.