About Us (so far)

About

I'm Keegan. I started OakRocky because I couldn't find the hat I wanted.

I lived in Raleigh for five years and Denver for the five after that, which is a strange way to end up with two teams. Both cities have their own language — things fans say that don't need explaining if you were there and don't translate if you weren't. I wanted a hat that said one of those things. What I found instead was a wall of official merch with a logo on it, or thin polyester with a screen print that cracks after two washes.

So the hats say the words instead of the logos. Sauce. Tuddy. A city nickname. If you know, you know, and if you don't, it's still a good-looking hat.

The other half of this is the hat itself. I ordered my first sample from a print-on-demand supplier, held it for about ten seconds, and knew it wasn't good enough. Too light, cheap sweatband, the kind of cap a brewery hands out at a 5K. I sent it back and started over. Every blank we use now got picked up, worn, and compared against the hats already on my hook before it made the cut. Everything is embroidered, not printed.

Day to day I run a marketing company that works with independent local retailers — the shops on the block that compete with companies a thousand times their size. I've spent fourteen years at that. OakRocky is the same idea pointed somewhere else: make the thing well, price it honestly, don't pretend to be bigger than you are.

I'm a dad of three in Denver. I played wide receiver in college, which mostly qualifies me to have opinions about route running that nobody asked for. Most of these designs started as something I said out loud at a game.

If there's a word from your city that belongs on a hat, tell me. That's genuinely how half of these got made.

— Keegan Edwards, Denver, CO

Go Canes!

Go Broncos!