An iconic cap made by a four-generation family Buffalo company will be celebrating its 70th anniversary Thursday .
New Era Cap’s 59FIFTY fitted hat, created in 1954 to help standardize the baseball uniform and improve team logo visibility, has grown into a product that is revered and collected while transcending sports, as well as style and culture.
The cap’s silhouette not only became a mainstay on the sporting scene but has also morphed into a form of individuality, incorporated into the fashion of streetwear and worn on runways, red carpets and even in board rooms.
The brand will be celebrating the history and influence of the cap on 59FIFTY Day starting at 10 a.m. at New Era’s global headquarters on Delaware Avenue. It will include a collaboration with Perry’s Ice Cream, product drops, music from DJ Milk and DJ Yes, and an appearance by Buffalo Bills offensive lineman Dion Dawkins. Major League Baseball teams hosting home games that day also will celebrate at their stadiums.
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“It’s become the perfect canvass to express your sense of style, your affinity for a baseball team, city or brand,” said Billy Loncar, director of advanced concepts and design at New Era. “It’s adapted with the trends. It starts with the design of the cap with a silhouette that is so unique. It’s great for the brand but also looks fantastic on people. Whether you’re in sports or culture, it has meant different things to different people.”
When Jim Wannemacher came to work for New Era 24 years ago, he wasn’t sure how the company’s products and his role there would evolve.
But, these days, he’s not surprised when New Era brings to Buffalo ambassador athletes – some of the most well-known in football, baseball and basketball, fellow influential brand representatives, officials from professional sports leagues, celebrity designers and pop culture influencers.
New Era now employs about 1,400 people globally, including about 360 in Buffalo, most of whom work in the former Federal Reserve Bank, where the company moved to in 2006.
“When I first started, we made baseball hats and I thought, ‘what more could we do?’ But, boy, was I surprised,” said Wannemacher, senior manager of archive and brand marketing at New Era. “We’re now doing stuff with top-tier designers in the world, here in Buffalo. It’s impressive.”
Harold Koch, son of New Era Cap founder Ehrhardt Koch, envisioned a more contemporary style for baseball caps. His design of the 59FIFTY included a 22-step production process, creating a cap with a structured front panel, tall and broad profile crown, a curvable flat visor and closed back available in fitted sizing.
New Era itself was born in Buffalo 34 years earlier, in 1920, located on Genesee Street and Bailey Avenue. The company has been tied to baseball since 1934 – originally making hats for the Cleveland Indians – and the relationship with MLB helped New Era initially develop a major platform, Wannemacher said. The cap was redeveloped from wool to more of a polyester base with moisture wicking cooler agents in 2007.
It became the official on-field cap for MLB in 1993, and the 59FIFTY is also now worn by athletes on draft day to championship parades for the NFL, NBA and WNBA.
Over the years, the cap’s silhouette has also become the canvas for collaborations with artists, influential creators and global fashion brands, including Gucci, Supreme, Fear of God, Virgil Abloh and Helmut Lang, as well as music celebrities like Jay-Z and Billie Eilish.
In 1996, film director and well-known New York sports fan Spike Lee was looking for a red Yankees hat to wear to a World Series game and New Era got permission to make it, spawning the start of alternative style, custom-made team caps and collaborations with celebrities and influencers. Right away, New Era’s business tripled.
Up until the 1980s, the only way to get one of these hats was to be a professional baseball player. The company took its first orders from customers by mail via an ad in the Sporting News for $12.95 per hat and received seven full bags of responses with orders. At the time, the hats were custom made to order.
There’s also been a logo sticker phenomenon connected to the 59FIFTY caps. What was first developed as a functional piece so that the customer understands the style and size of the cap without opening the caps and leaving a mess at stores has become a piece of the hat that symbolizes authenticity and status and many times remains on the cap.
New Era tried to address its iteration of styles by changing the color of the logo stickers but there was instant pushback, forcing the company to go back to black and gold stickers for the fitted hats and silver and black stickers for all the other products.
But not every 59FIFTY has been a winner and there have been quality issues in different iterations of the cap.
“We’re always looking to evolve our caps and put our best foot forward,” Loncar said.
What's new at New Era
• New Era plans to reintroduce in the U.S. its flagship stores, like the one in Buffalo at the company's headquarters, starting with a second location coming to New York City.
The Delaware Avenue store is the company’s only branded store in the U.S., but products are sold in many sports apparel and cap stores like Lids.
New Era used to have nine of these U.S. stores, before all but one closed.
• The design of New Era's first namesake apparel line Brand New Era will be led by Dao-Yi Chow, who was named the company's creative director and vice president last week.
Chow, who will also oversee merchandising and marketing, previously served as creative director for Sean John and co-creative director at DKNY.
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