BC Business
Founder Ben Miller is trying to take the company to its next stage.
The story of Wirth Hats is an inspiring one. Ben Miller started the company in 2018 as an ode to his late friend Jakub Wirth, who took his own life four years earlier.
The two met at Copenhagen Business School, and Wirth had told Miller his dream was to start a hat company. But the business is also focused on mental health—every purchase supports counselling and therapy for those who would otherwise be unable to afford it.
It’s a great idea and one that obviously attracted many people, especially in COVID. But it’s been five years since launching and Miller, who has a day job working as a leadership development consultant, had to figure out how to level up the company.
Fortunately, the answer came to him in an email from Best Buy’s national event planner. “They reached out saying they’d love to connect about ordering 300 branded hats for their national leadership conference,” recalls Miller. “That was one of those moments like, What just happened here, what’s going on?”
The trend of more companies reaching out continued for Wirth and for Miller, and while he obviously appreciates the business they bring, there’s a few things on his checklist. For one, a partner with Wirth needs to be an organization that actually cares about the people who make it run. Miller was impressed with the call he had with that Best Buy rep, as he felt it “symbolized the importance [Best Buy] wants to create around mental health, access to resources and the people that need it.
Another thing on the checklist is that it’s still difficult for Miller and his team of about five permanent employees to make custom hats in batches of less than around 100. The hats, which the company bills as a “hug for your head,” are made in Richmond using top quality materials. Recently, he found a solution for the problem that he hopes is a permanent one, and has a list of companies to reach back out to. “It’s something I feel we just scratched the surface on, as far as putting it out there,” he says. “For us, it represents so much more [than making money], it’s about providing that gift, that impact to employees.”
If there has been a watershed moment for Miller and Wirth thus far, it happened in the summer at the annual conference put on by Canadian insurance giant Sun Life Financial. The company had reached out to arrange hats for the 425 people in attendance and it asked Miller to tell his company’s story.
“I’d done a fair bit of public speaking—I’m pretty comfortable in front of groups—but walking into the high, high production space reminded me of a Tony Robbins conference,” he remembers with a laugh. “I was passed on from six people. Let me introduce you to Jennifer, who’s going to take you into the back and set you up with a mic, and Jennifer passed me off to Brian, and Brian passed me off to someone. It was just like, Whoa, we’re doing this.”
As Miller tells it, the MC threw an impromptu Q&A at him after his short presentation, and he feels like it resonated with people. “One employee came up, said they’d been there for two days and that was the most impactful story so far,” Miller says. “The response from them was incredible. We got emails after from different people who were there and orders started coming in for smaller teams.”
Those larger orders will be key as Wirth tries to establish a sustainable, long-term business model. That’s not an easy thing to do when you manufacture in Canada with high quality materials and give away proceeds for counselling sessions.
“We’re wanting people to access our hats and not have them be priced out,” says Miller. “That’s where B2B becomes so important. When we’re able to do bigger orders, it’s more sustainable for us to operate. It provides large sums of funds that bring a whole bunch of benefits.”