More answers!

We would like to let you know that the hats we manufacture and export are all carefully inspected in order to meet our standard quality requirements which are as follows:

1) The exact grade of fineness
2) Evenness of weave
3) The best materials available in the market
4) The best shaping and finishing

Some manufacturers LOWER the price of their hats by offering LOWER quality  hats or hats that required LESS additional work done by third parties. However, it may be difficult to tell whether a manufacturer is offering you better quality hats than other just because his prices are higher. Vice versa, if a manufacturer offers you cheaper hats, that does not mean his hats are lower quality, as it might be all the contrary!... Do not forget that the panama hat industry works as any other industry in the world and price variations depend mostly on the quality offered as well as the honesty of the manufacturers.

We always recommend our clients order samples before buying or even recommend them order samples from different manufacturers. We consider ourselves an honest and reliable enterprise, we will always try to maintain a long term business relationship with our importers. We will be truthful with our quotations and offer the exact quality of hats our clients may import for the price they are paying.

We know who our competitor are, what they do and what they don't, and we love them because they are the ones who give us the courage to do better!

Why is one hat more expensive than another?

Price variation in Panama hats is mostly about the quality of the straw, weave, final process and look. You must always keep in mind that not all Panama hats are the same. The amount of work required to prepare the straw and to weave the hat can vary from hours to many months. Fino, Super Fino hats whose fiber is very thin take several months to weave, especially when it comes to Montecristi hats.

In other words one hat costs more than other because it is a better hat, it has a finer weave, it took longer to weave or it has fewer flaws. As mentioned above, panama hats are hand made and no hat is equal to any other. Each hat is unique and has it own finger print or weave print. Flaws and imperfections in the weave or straw are completely common. However, the fewer flaws it has the better quality it will be and the more it will cost.

Make no mistake, price did play an important role for all the hat brands in driving satisfaction, but failing to understand the impact that other elements of the customer experience had on satisfaction would have been a costly mistake.

There are many guidelines hatters may use when judging the quality of a Panama Hat, we have previously mentioned some, but we may summarize the following:

1. Fineness of weave
2. Montecristi or Cuenca
3. Evenness of weave
4. Color of hat and straw
5. Shaping and finishing
6. Size of hat

Fineness of weave or grade.-

The most important thing when judging the quality of a woven hat is the weave itself. The finer the weave, the finer the hat, this means that one hat is more finely woven than another or the weaver used thinner straws  to weave the hat. Consequently, more work and more time are required to weave a fine hat than to weave a coarse one.

The quantity of weaves per inch must always be measured on the crown of the hat not on the brims. Due to the structure of the hat the rows in the brims are normally a bit thicker than those in the crown.

We as weavers know that when the straw is split in two to make it thinner and weave a finer hat, the amount of work need to finish the hat is multiplied by four. Thus, a hat twice as fine takes four times as long to weave. If you do not know much about panama hats differences, you might be surprised, why a hat that looks only slightly finer than another may cost significantly more, the answer is simple: it took remarkably more time and effort to weave it!
That little bit more fineness has to be multiplied by the thousands of weaves adding up to several additional weeks of weaving time.

In order to understand the fineness of panama hats, they have been ranged in “Grades”. This way, a grade “O” is a very cheap and coarse hat, a grade 2 is twice as fine, and so on, grade 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc.

Montecristi or Cuenca Hats

The difference between Montecristi and Cuenca hats is just the city where they were woven and the fineness of the weave. Montecristi is the name of a village in the province of Manabí in the costal region of our country Ecuador. Cuenca is the third largest city of Ecuador.

A panama hat may be woven in Montecristi or Cuenca or in any other city of our country. The hats woven in Cuenca offer a lower range of grades, while hats woven in Montecristi are only very fine hats. This does not mean you will not be able to find a hat as fine as a Montecristi in Cuenca; you just have to get a very high grade that matches the grade and color of a Montecristi Hat.

In the begining, straw hats were woven in the town of Montecristi, that is why this name became very famous worldwide. However, as time passed away, the art of weaving spread to the cities of Cuenca and Cañar, which are now the centers of major hat production.

Panama hats are woven in the same manner, with the same straw, with the same techniques and keeping in mind the same parameters. There is no reason to believe a hat will change or be remarkably different just because it was woven in a town on the coast or in the highlands of Ecuador.

As mentioned above, the difference is just the grade you want to have the hat woven and maybe the color.
Some people become so obsessed with this, that they will not want a hat unless they may read Montecristi printed on the inner band.

Evenness of weave

This is another guideline, the more regular and straight the weave, the finer the hat. Better quality hats have fewer irregularities in the weave; there are less gaps or knots.
This applies for all grades; the thickness of the straws must be consistent throughout the hat.

It is important to know that the finer the hat the harder it is to keep the rows perfectly straight.  There is a higher probability of making slight “errors” if a weaver is weaving a very fine hat “Grade 12” which takes about 1 month than a standard hat that takes about 2 days to weave.

In spite of these guidelines, there is no such thing as a perfect Panama hat. Even in the most exquisite and most expensive hats, there will be flaws. Panama hats are hand woven, not made by machines, each weave is an identification mark the weaver impresses on each hat he/she weaves, making it unique in the world. Weavers do it hour after hour, day after day, week after week. If someone ever guarantees you there will be no imperfections, and irregularities in a panama hat, he/she is lying to you!

Very finely woven hats with an almost perfect weave and nearly flawless are jewels you will rarely find.

Straw and Hat color

Regarding colors, panama hats are submerged in peroxide for many hours to bleach them. A fully bleached hat will be very white. However, you may also have a more natural straw color if bleaching time is reduced. The peroxide-bleached straw will often feel rubbery and unnatural to the touch.

Hats may also be half-bleached, natural unbleached straw, or even dyed in different colors. Keep in mind that straw is not always the same color, in order to have an even color throughout the hat, our weaver must sort out the straw that has the same or similar color, and this takes some time, of course!

Panama hats are also glazed to make them stiffer; this can be done using other chemical substances. All these steps add marginal value to the hat, price will obviously differ from hat to hat depending on how soft and white you want it, as well as the color it will be dyed.

On the other hand, Montecristi hats are bleached with sulfur fumes, this can also me done with Cuenca Hats. Hats bleached in this manner are very light, but they will rarely be bright white. Montecristi hats are mostly natural ivory color.

Almost all hats will have some reddish or gray straw.  Even in very fine hats, you will often see gray or reddish straw mixed in with the lighter straw. This is normal, in some cases it is very easy to notice it by a simple glance, but in other hats you will have some difficulty. In general, the more consistent the color throughout the hat, the better and more expensive it will be.

 Shaping and Finishing

Almost all Panama hats are shaped by machine. A tiny percentage are shaped, or blocked by hand. Since this requires a lot of time and money to pay the hatter that blocks them, panama hats are rarely hand blocked in Ecuador.

There is just one hatter in Cuenca Ecuador that hand blocks hats; however the final look it has can be enhanced or ruined.

The body of the hat can be enhanced with ornaments or embroidery in the case of ladies’ hats. The additional work involved in adding ornaments or other characteristics makes a hat more expensive. In the case of gentlemen hats, adding leather bands and ornaments increases its value.

Hydraulic presses use steam and pressure to give the hat “memory shape”, this takes only a few seconds, this means the hat even when folded for a short period of time will eventually tend to recover its original shape, with some help it can fully recover it.

In the case of hand blocked hats, the hatter will do this manually and will need at least 2 days for a hat to be blocked. Hand blocking does not give the hat the same quality or final look; they are normally harder and coarse, because the hatter might use some chemicals to make the hat stiff in order to maintain its shape in time.
Even in the event the hatter gets a very soft and beautiful hat, the time and process involved in doing so will highly increase the cost of it.

Sweatbands and ribbons are put on the hats in an assembly-line manner with as much of the work as possible done by machine.
Leather sweatbands are individually cut and fitted to each hat. Ribbons and bows are cut, shaped, and sewn by our weavers.

Remember that not all the work is done by simply weaving and blocking a hat, there will always be marginal work added by third parties, such as: weaving straw ornament, making leather bands, manufacturing labels with logos of your own store, etc. The work done by third parties must also me included in the final cost of a hat.

A panama hat is a work of art, as we say “A genuine masterpiece in your hands”.

Size of the Hat

As previously mentioned the longer it takes to weave a hat, the more it is likely to cost. It takes longer to weave a hat with a wide brim than a hat with a short brim. It takes longer to weave a very large hat than a very small hat. Hats that are sold as S, M, and L should cost less than hats made to actual hat sizes (71⁄8, 73⁄8, etc.).

Hats have a standard measure in crown and brims, if you require hats with wider brims, the weaver will have to weave it out to 25⁄8 inches wide all the way around. It would be normally done then, but if required the weaver will have to continue weaving for another two days, weeks or months, depending on how fine the hat is, then he will finish when the hat brim is the dimension you required. The additional two days, weeks or months would obviously be paid to the weaver. This additional cost will be passed on to the final costumer.

The same would be true of a very large hat compared with a very small hat. Large hats take longer to weave; therefore the weaver deserves to be paid more.

It has been a long reading but necessary to make you understand some of the mysteries behind the price of a panama hat!

We appreciate your time and interest in our panama hats!

Thank you!

Andean Art