The only downside is that you can only wear one hat at a time! But dealers are finding a way to sell multiple caps anyway.

But while the worlds of sports, entertainment and special events are filled with hat opportunities, of course the greatest demand for headwear continues to come from baseball and softball players. That will always be the bread-and-butter of team hat sales.

The best barometer of headwear sales is the Sports & Fitness Industry Association’s (SFIA) annual Manufacturers Sales by Category Report.  The most recent findings indicate that sales of hats, caps and visors are strong. In fact, wholesale sales of  the category were $726.1 million in 2024, a resounding 35.2 percent increase from $536.9 million in a pre-pandemic 2019 market.

Dealers Live Up Top

When it comes to baseball, the demand comes from all levels of competition, which includes local rec leagues, middle schools, high schools and travel teams and, according to Allen Krebbs, owner of Kratz Sporting Goods in Clarksville, IN, baseball hat sales are strong and are expected to stay strong throughout the Hoosier state.

“Everybody is wearing a hat these days,” reports Krebbs. “We also sell staff hats for coaches in other sports. For instance, in football we’ll sell 10 to 12 hats to a school for its coaching staff.”

For Kratz Sporting Goods, the sales of baseball hats to travel teams usually result in a customized cap order, while hat sales to baseball teams from schools are in sync with the school colors. Krebbs says they sell more hats from The Game, along with Champro, Richardson and Pacific.

At the high school level, Krebbs is noticing that more and more schools are buying and wearing multiple uniforms, which often triggers the purchase of another school hat to match that new uniform. “Many schools are buying new uniforms for special occasions, which usually results in another hat order,” he says.

One of the more interesting business opportunities for Kratz Sporting Goods took place in December (2025), when it received an order for 2000 hats from Indiana University, in conjunction with its football team playing in the Rose Bowl. “We had a week to turn it around and get the hats delivered to the campus in Bloomington. We did it. Those hats came from Adidas. The hats were given to the football players, members of the IU band and certain alumni that made the trip.”

As it turns out, Krebbs and his wife were in attendance at the Rose Bowl and he confirmed that he was wearing an Indiana hat during the game. (Editor’s note: We wonder how many Indiana University National Championship hats they sold this year? But that’s a story for another issue!)

Krebbs says sales of softball visors are now on the upswing. “Visor sales are making a comeback,” he reports. “Many of the college softball girls are now wearing visors, so many of the younger girls are wearing visors, too. Everything goes in cycles.”

More From The Hoosier State

Another Indiana team dealer has his fair share of headwear stories to tell. Doc Claussen, a manager for Coaches Corner in Terre Haute, tells an interesting story about how a local rec baseball league is ordering hats.

“One of our local rec baseball leagues orders the same color hat for every player in the league, so every player is wearing the same hat,” he reports. “That eliminates delays with add-ons and fill-ins. If the league has 375 players, then the league will order 400 hats so there are extra hats, just in case one gets lost. In every game, every player is wearing the same color hat with the same league logo on it. We’ve been doing this for five years and it works.”

But Claussen feels different about softball visors in western Indiana then Krebbs does in other parts of the state. “In our area, girls tend to want to wear bows and ribbons in their hair,” he reports.

His primary cap vendors include Champro, Richardson, Outdoor Cap and The Game.

More Than Just the Diamond

In Florida, Joel Dunn, a sales rep for Baker Sporting Goods, based in Jacksonville, says he’s generating headwear business from other sports besides baseball and softball. “When we build on-line stores for football, volleyball and soccer, we always have a hat option for customers,” he says. “It does generate extra sales of hats.”

Since high school hat sales are always tied to any given school’s colors, there are no ‘hot’ or trendy colors within the hat industry right now.  But, there is definitely a style of hat preference. “Adults tend to like to buy hats with the pre-curve, while teens tend to like the flat-bill cap,” Dunn points out.

Over the years, Dunn has purchased hats from a number of vendors.“If a school is tied in with Adidas, Nike and Under Armour for uniforms, the hats are usually the same brand as the apparel brand,” he says. If not, he’s usually buying from The Game and Richardson.

“I often make my decisions based on the ease of ordering and the ease of delivery,” he says.

One hurdle that Dunn tries to avoid when purchasing hats is the celebration of the Chinese New Year.

“At that time, production can shut down for two weeks in January or February,” he points out, so hat orders need to be made well in advance when sourcing from China, especially for hats which you need by February or March.”

In Royal Palm Beach, FL, Jerry Steuerer, owner of Scotty’s Sport Shop, sells some MLB-style hats to local rec baseball leagues while local travel baseball teams are purchasing custom hats for their players. For Steuerer, teams are buying plain hats from vendors such as Richardson and Outdoor Cap, and then having them decorated.

Meanwhile, in Vero Beach, FL, Dave Whipp of Dave’s Sporting Goods is selling more generic hats to local rec baseball leagues than to travel teams and high school squads. “We used to sell lots of MLB-logo hats, but now that’s not the case,” he says.

As a benefit, the retail space for Dave’s Sporting Goods is adjacent to a series of baseball, softball and T-ball fields that are the home to a number of local rec baseball programs. This proximity does generate quite a few spur-of-the-moment game-day purchases of last-minute necessities such as baseballs, bats, batting helmets, batting gloves, cleats, socks and, on occasion, hats and ballcaps.

When it comes to decorating hats, Dave’s Sporting Goods used to do all the decorating and embroidering in-house, but that’s changed. “We are having our hats embroidered by the manufacturer,” says Whipp. Most of his orders are for red, blue and pink.

While interest in rec softball is growing in the greater Indian River County (Florida) area, that same cannot necessarily be said for sales of visors to girls playing softball.

“Many girls playing softball still prefer to wear no hat or ribbons in their hair,” he points out. “Though many of the girls do like to do the same thing as the college girls they see playing on TV.”