The New York Post is reporting that America’s oldest hat company, which is also the brand behind American Made Matters, has in fact been lying about making their hats in America.
“The 150-year-old Bollman Hat Co. of Adamstown, Pa., promised to stop claiming that its hats are virtually all made in this country,” the NY Post wrote, “after a Federal Trade Commission probe found that 70 percent of its hats are imported.”
While Bollman has neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, federal regulators say that “America’s oldest hat company has been selling consumers a false narrative.”
That narrative wasn’t tied just to their products, either. In 2010, Bollman started American Made Matters, a subsidiary that “charged other manufacturers $99 a year to use the logo on their products and be listed on the website as US manufacturers.”
So what did it take, besides $99, to claim yourself as US manufacturer under the American Made Matters standards? “[Companies] would self-certify that 50 percent of the cost of that product and the final assembly took place in the US,” Bollman CEO Don Rongione told The Post.
Cool strategy. Not only did they mislead their own customers, they enabled other companies to mislead theirs as well.
It’s like our president became a hat company.
You can read more about it at The New York Post.
