I have a good friend that runs an embroidery business and I asked him about hats. The issue is with the assembly of hats in North America. The problem with hats, and why he cant get a yearly 5000 hat contract in Trenton is that you cant stitch the front or the brim of the hats once they are assembled without destroying the structure of the hat. That is why you will never see those crappy mall stores stitch the front or the brims, they can only ever stitch the sides over the ears. To get these hats, you have to get a company to design the hat and send proofs to the customer, then stitch all the hats in house in a flat pattern. Now you can imagine paying a North American to assemble those hats would be insanely expensive... so those flats get send to Asia to be assembled whenever the chosen factory gets a chance to do so. This all takes quite a bit of time... For the 5000 hats they have to have for the fishing derby the design in 9 months ahead to be guaranteed for the event... Smaller orders may not get the priority in the assembly process. It doesn't surprise me that it's taken this long...
All that being said... I would like my tan hat!!
I'm lucky enough i'm in Trenton ill just go pick up a black one just in case..