This is the ultimate guide on custom embroidered hats and customized headwear. 

Read it if you want to learn how to design personalized branded caps with your company’s logo.

Here’s what you’re going to learn:

• What are the most common types of custom hats.
• What to pay attention to when ordering custom hats.
• How to order your own personalized caps in four simple steps.

Let’s get started. 

Table of Contents

The Four Most Common Types of Custom Hats

What to Pay Attention to When Ordering Custom Branded Hats

Order Your Personalized Hats In Four Simple Steps

The Four Most Common Types of Custom Hats

Before we dive deep into how to design your personalized caps with your logo, we’re going to discuss the four most common types of hats that can be easily customized.

For each type we’ll also provide you with an approximate price range that can help you get a clear idea of what the ideal hat type would be for you, based on your budget. 

Author’s Note: Keep in mind that there are many different options of headwear, from baseball caps, we’re going to discuss a little further down, to fitted hats and headbands. 

However, we’re highlighting four types that, based on our long experience in the swag industry, can make your swag boxes a success. 

Let’s get to the first type.

Type #1: Baseball Cap

The first type of custom headwear we have for you is the baseball cap.

The reason why we’re kicking off our list with this one is because a baseball hat can be worn by virtually anyone, no matter their age, environment or style. 

It can be a chino twill ball cap like the one shown above, a trucker hat with a breathable mesh material at the back, a flat bill hat, a leather patch hat, a fitted dad hat, a snapback cap  or a performance sports cap. 

Colors range from red, black, blue, camo, pigment dyed, or any other that might match your brand’s palette. 

As you can see, the variations of the so-called baseball cap are endless, making the process of creating your own hat with your company logo interesting and creative.

Put another way, there are so many hat styles, with the most popular being the trucker cap and the unstructured cap, that you can be sure you’ll find that one customized hat that will better promote your brand and capture your brand identity. 

But more on this, a little further down in this post. 

Let’s get to the second most common type of customized branded headwear. 

Price Range: $9 – $25

Type #2: Beanie

The second item in our list of the most common and easily customizable headwear pieces  is the beanie. 

The beanie makes a great promotional product that’s usually preferred during winter months for obvious reasons.

A beanie is usually made of wool because of the fabric’s thickness and ability to retain heat in cold weather. 

However, other material options also include:

• Acrylic 
• Cotton
• Fleece 

The variations in terms of different materials and colors are countless, thus, giving companies a variety of customization options. 

Additionally, there are many options in terms of a beanie’s style. 

You might want to consider knitted pom pom beanies, especially if you’re creating swag for your employees‘ kids and toddlers. 

Author’s Tip: Keep in mind that eco-friendly swag is one of the most prominent and contemporary swag trends right now, from outerwear to other mundane objects. 

If available, go for beanies that are made of eco-friendly materials, like recycled polyester, recycled or organic cotton, and repurposed wool. 

Price Range: $8 – $30

Type #3: Visor Hat

The visor hat is yet another popular custom logo hat. 

Like the previous two list items, it makes a great customized cap that offers many color and style choices. 

A visor hat is usually adjustable and has the perfect fit. 

Additionally, it’s preferred from athletes and people that regularly do outdoors activities and sports. 

Nowadays, sun visors are also really popular among fashionistas, from high fashion brands like Prada and Miu Miu, as well as sportswear brands, like Nike, Yupoong, and Under Armour, always making sure to include visors in their collections. 

Price Range: $10 – $27

Type #4: Bucket Hat

The fourth and last custom cap we think you should totally consider when deciding on the types of custom hats you’ll be investing in, is the bucket hat. 

Such custom printed hats are unisex and like the previous items we saw in this post, they can be given to people of all ages. 

Additionally, the bucket hat is a very stylish swag option given its rise in popularity in the past few years. 

From streetwear brands, like Carhartt and Richardson, to fast fashion brands, like Topshop, fashion brands are reviving the 90’s trend in imaginative and creative ways.

Our advice would be that you embrace the fashion comeback of the bucket hat and create a killer design to feature on it. 

People will love it! 

Price Range: $9-$30

What to Pay Attention to When Ordering Custom Branded Hats

So far, we’ve covered the four most popular types of hats that can easily be customized and become cool and thoughtful swag gifts. 

Whether you’re planning to include a personalized hat in your swag bags or to just give it away separately, there are some points you should consider when ordering custom branded hats. 

Let’s dive into the first tip we have for you. 

Tip #1: Have a budget

The first and one of the most important tips we can give you is to have a predetermined budget based on your company’s financial abilities as well as needs. 

To make sure your budget is logical, you should keep in mind that your material choices as well as quantity needs should significantly shape your budget. 

To put it simply, your budget will be formed by the pricing of the products you’ll be choosing. 

That happens because different products have different costs based on their material, colors, style, and several other factors related to the production costs.

Tip #2: Be careful of quality

Having a budget is important because it can help you make sure you’re not making any financial mistakes when you want to buy custom embroidered caps or customize caps. 

However, keep in mind that quality is just as important, if not more!

You should always keep in mind that good swag is swag that people can actually enjoy for years to come and they are happy to wear. 

In other words, the same way you wouldn’t give away low quality t-shirts and hoodies that look terrible on people, you shouldn’t invest in cheap custom hats even if they seem to be the best option money-wise. 

The best way of promoting your brand is through fabulous, high-quality swag that will make the recipients want to spread the word about you.

Tip #3: Set a realistic deadline for delivery

After having set your budget and taken care of the quality of your promotional products, you should consider your next steps in terms of ordering your custom hats. 

An important step is to set a realistic deadline for delivery, the same way you’ve previously set a realistic budget. 

For example, if you’re planning to join a trade show or take part in a virtual or physical conference in a few months’ time, you should make sure that your swag will be ready on time. 

Our tip here would be to always plan ahead and give yourself, your collaborators and, in this case, the swag supplier you’ll be working with, plenty of time to do their best work.

Tip #4: Maintain your brand identity

The final tip we think is absolutely essential when ordering swag for your brand, from drinkware to headwear, is to maintain your brand identity. 

Think of it that way, every product you create is an extension of your brand.

For that reason, you should always try to make sure that your brand is promoted and featured in the most appropriate and relevant way possible. 

We love the following definition of brand identity by modern presentation software, Visme:

In other words, your brand identity is the image people will see from your brand so it better be great and capture your style, right?

The following graphic on the benefits of brand identity says it all:

As you can see, maintaining and investing in your brand identity is essential so that you build trust as well as increase customer loyalty. 

The hypothesis that you can do those magical things through swag makes the whole process even more exciting and valuable. 

Let’s have a look at an example.

The following branded headwear pieces come from the Google merchandise store:

As you can see, all four pieces feature a company logo in a straightforward and familiar way everyone can recognize. 

Another example comes from DHL, the German International Courier company that was founded in the USA. 

The baseball cap shown above features the company colors, yellow and red,  as well as the company logo. 

This way, such a piece of swag helps maintain the company’s brand image and identity while promoting it further. 

As simple as that!

Let’s now get in detail about how you can order your personalized custom hats.

Order Your Personalized Custom Hats In Four Simple Steps

The process of ordering your personalized custom hats might seem a bit complicated, especially if you’ve never done it before. 

However, we’ve broken the process down into four simple steps that you can follow and make sure you’ve taken all necessary steps and actions. 

Let’s get started with the first step. 

Step #1: Define your needs

First things first, you need to define your needs. 

Defining your needs might include covering the following points:

• Quantity – how many items you’ll need.
• Quality – what kind of headwear you’re looking for.
• Who the recipients of your branded gifts are going to be.
• What the potential environment that your branded gifts will be worn in is.

More specifically, in terms of how many pieces of hats you should order, you should make things clear with your swag supplier and also be informed about possible regulations, like minimum order restrictions. 

Additionally, when it comes to quantity it’s really important that you always try to stay in budget while also making sure that the swag you’re going to order will be enough and not less than you might need. 

In general, when defining your needs, you should also try to answer some important questions in relation to who’s going to wear your hats and where. 

This will help you figure out exactly if you should go for the flex fit hats, the custom snapbacks, or a nice and warm beanie. 

Your needs will probably be different if you’re looking for event swag or you simply want to have a stock of new employee gifts or want to invest in swag for onboarding new clients. 

Overall, knowing your needs you are less likely to overspend and more likely to get the result you’re hoping for.

Step #2: Choose a type and finalize the design

The second step is to choose the type of headwear you’re going for. 

Are you going to choose the beanie because it’s winter  – or it’s going to be winter soon – or you’d rather go for a bucket hat that’s trending right now?

Let’s have a look at how you can do this easily and hassle-free using our Swag Pack Builder.

On the left hand side of the page you can see the different categories of swag you can choose from. 

Given that we’re looking for headwear, we’re going for the Other Apparel category. 

The first step would be to pick your swag, in this case, the type of hat you want to customize. 

Author’s Note: In case you want a product that’s not currently on our Swag Shop, make sure to let us know so we can make the product available to you. 

After having decided on the type of hat you want to print your brand elements on, you can go on finalizing the design you’re going to use on the branded items. 

In doing so, you need to closely work on the design and make sure that your designer or design team makes a design that totally suits your brand guidelines. 

Additionally, it’s vital that you choose a design that looks great, is well made and actually matches the style and size of the product you’ve chosen. 

For example, you can’t go for a design that’s enormous if you’ve chosen a visor because its surface is smaller than the surface of other types of hats. 

Similarly, if you like the screen printing effect on hats, you should pick a trucker hat as it’s considered to be the best for screen printing. 

In like manner, if you love sublimated hats, you probably can’t go for a cotton beanie because it won’t last. 

What we mean by this is that when deciding on the type of your hat, it’d be really helpful to take into consideration aspects of style and material choices as well. 

Uploading your logo or any design you want to feature on the type of headwear you chose is a rather important part of the process. 

You can do that by going to the top of our Swag Shop page and simply uploading your logo. 

Exactly as shown below:

Let’s get to the next step.

Step #3: Find a reliable vendor

The third step you should take is to find a reliable vendor. 

A reliable swag vendor is not just a collaborator that shows you all options available, although that’s also important. 

What’s more important is that the vendor you choose facilitates the process for you and helps you make sure that you’re not going to use time nor money in swag that you don’t really need or swag that doesn’t suit your brand. 

In finding the best vendor in order to cover your needs and create killer custom hats for your brand, you might find that you need the combination of a bigger vendor alongside a smaller vendor that will make sure to bring imagination and fresh perspective to the table. 

Author’s Note: We recently published a blog post on how to develop your procurement strategy, including finding the best swag vendors for your swag needs. You might want to take a look inside.

Step #4: Place your order

The final step you need to take is to place your order!

In case you haven’t uploaded your logo earlier, there’s still time to do it. 

Placing your order includes providing us with your full name and contact information. 

Before placing your order, we advise you to go through the previous steps and review your choices. 

You can easily do that by having a look at the order summary on the left hand side of the page. 

This way, you will feel confident to know that there aren’t any spots in the process that you missed to take care of and it will increase your chances of creating and distributing swag that proudly promotes your brand.

In general, a big part of placing your order has to do with the vendor you’ve chosen to order your swag from. 

As we mentioned a little further up, a great vendor will make you feel safe and happy with your choices while also making sure that your swag quality and appearance is exactly what it should be. 

After having reviewed your options you can move forward with the process and basically take the exciting step of placing your order. 

As you can see, our design team will prepare the mock-ups for you. 

As soon as we create the mock-ups of the branded items with your logo on them, we’ll send them to you so you can review and make sure it all looks as it should. 

Don’t worry if you want to experiment with different options in terms of your selections. 

We’ll work with you to make sure that the result is exactly what you were hoping for. 

In other words, think of this process as an experiment that will help you be 100% sure that you have the swag you were dreaming of for your company.  

What’s really important to mention is that the payment is made after the mock-ups have been reviewed and approved by you.  

Let’s wrap our post up and close with some final thoughts.

Now Over to You

So, there you have it. 

Now, you’re one step closer to understanding how to design your own personalized hats. 

As we mentioned earlier, you always have to plan ahead and give the vendor (e.g., branded merchandise agency) enough time to prepare your order. 

Especially if you’re looking for branded hats for a large scale event, you have to start the sourcing process as early as possible. 

If you need help finding the right custom hat for your next event, feel free to send us a brief message below. 

We can help you with the whole process, from defining your needs and finding the right hat type to designing a hat that’s unique and matches your brand’s identity. 

Thanks for reading!