Sublimated Baseball Caps that Empower Marginalized People
- The Purnaa Team
- Jan 11, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 8
By Corban Bryant
Mockups of some of Purnaa's first sublimated caps
Did you know that January 15th is National Hat Day in the United States? No? Well, we won't hold it against you. In honor of the day, we want to announce a new effort at Purnaa: we're launching sublimated baseball caps!
Why Caps? The Nepal Context
Caps are a fairly new product for Purnaa, but we think they are a vital part of achieving our mission of creating jobs to empower marginalized people to fresh starts and fulfilled lives.
Scaling a manufacturing business in Nepal comes with unique challenges. As it is a small, landlocked, mountainous country, Nepal faces limited industrial and logistics infrastructure; getting most kinds of materials here is challenging, expensive, and requires long lead times; and exporting heavy items out of the country is also expensive. These constraints require solutions that are both operationally efficient and adaptable.
What Are Sublimated Baseball Caps?
To overcome some of these challenges, we've invested in developing Sublimated Baseball caps, produced using dye-sublimation printing, a process in which heat and pressure are used to transfer dye directly into the fibres of the fabric. Unlike traditional decoration methods, such as embroidery or screen printing, which sit on top of the material, sublimation integrates the design into the fabric itself at a molecular level. This results in a finish that is both permanent and highly detailed, without altering the texture or weight of the cap.
A More Flexible Ethical Manufacturing Model
Sublimation enables us to take a more agile approach to cap production. By working with standardised base materials that can be printed on demand, we reduce sourcing complexity while allowing for fully customised, photo-quality designs.
This approach plays to our technical sewing strengths while streamlining operations. In practice, it allows us to offer:
Super fast lead times
Lower minimum order quantities
Greater design flexibility
Competitive pricing
All while maintaining our commitment to Fair Trade and responsible production.
Launching Caps with Restoration Apparel
To launch this new capability at a substantial scale, we're working with an incredible first customer, Restoration Apparel Company from Kansas City, USA. We met the co-founders, Mike and MJ, from a few years ago and immediately clicked due to our similar mission. They founded Restoration with a goal to provide work opportunities with dignity to people in need, strategically creating employment opportunities for refugees in the US and marginalized people in Haiti, and choosing to work with other social enterprises as much as possible. Mike and MJ were looking for additional production capacity for their growing business of Sublimated Wholesale Sportswear, which was already providing more than 1800 custom units per day to its customers. We suggested they add a sublimated cap to compliment their current sports uniform offering. Despite 2020's upheaval of COVID-19 on their normal business, they jumped at the idea and generously provided a downpayment to cover our initial stock materials investment.
Mike says, "We are super excited about our new partnership with Purnaa. We are delighted to have this unique product in our repertoire. More than that, we are thrilled to utilize our network to bless workers with transformational, life-lifting employment in Nepal. We are thankful for our newfound partnership with Purnaa and look forward to a gathering momentum!"
We hope that together we can provide a unique offering for teams: a fully sublimated uniform paired with a matching cap. With Restoration's in-house art-support, teams can submit a concept and get infinite color and artwork options not limited by traditional decoration techniques of screen printing and embroidery. Together, we'd love to scale our cap offering and create more job opportunities in Nepal.
Ready to Start Your Custom Cap Journey?
If you're exploring custom caps for your brand or business, we’d love to support you. At Purnaa, we work with organisations to create fully customised caps while prioritising ethical manufacturing, low MOQs, and flexible design options.
