121-year-old Michigan-made winter hat is seeing a resurgence [View all]

(Detroit Free Press) If you were at a trivia night in metro Detroit, and were asked to rattle off some Michigan-specific brands, you might say Better Made or Faygo, maybe Vernors or Little Caesars.

You can add the iconic Stormy Kromer hat to this list, thanks to a savvy business move in 2001 by Bob Jacquart of Jacquart Fabric Products, based in Ironwood, Michigan.

The hat itself has a colorful backstory, born out of the old English proverb “necessity is the mother of invention.”

In the early 1900s, George “Stormy” Kromer of Kaukauna, Wisconsin, was a semiprofessional baseball player and railroad engineer. ..............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2024/01/20/stormy-kromer-winter-hat-upper-peninsula-michigan/72174955007/