The Stormy Kromer. Say the name around these parts and people will nod knowingly, if not outright sing its praises.
The trademark ear-flapped hat can be seen in aging black and white photos from Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota depicting hunters, loggers and outdoorsmen dating all the way back to 1903, when the hat was first produced.
It's almost hard to believe that it's not an original Yooper creation.
Instead, the Stormy Kromer was first manufactured by its namesake, a former semi-professional baseball player and locomotive engineer named George "Stormy" Kromer. The story goes that Kromer had lost a few too many hats while operating the trains and finally came home one day and asked his wife, Ida, to modify one of his baseball caps to keep it in place and protect him from the bitter Wisconsin winter winds.
The result was the iconic, all-wool, short-brimmed, ear-flapped hat that has long been standard headgear throughout the area. The flaps, as most anyone around here can tell you, are fashionably worn either up or down over the ears.
The cap was a success for Kromer, who sold it to his co-workers, fellow engineers and outdoorsmen. All the production was done in his home until 1919 when he and his wife opened a manufacturing plant in Milwaukee. In 1965, Richard Grossman purchased the company and continued to manufacture it in the same city.
The Stormy Kromer didn't become an Upper Peninsula-made product until 2001 when Bob Jacquart was sitting in an Ironwood cafe drinking his morning coffee when the regulars were discussing the news they had just heard: The Kromer Cap Co., after nearly a century, would no longer be producing the instantly-recognizable hat. Grossman had made the decision to pursue production of more profitable items.
Some of the customers in the restaurant said it was probably a good idea to go out and buy up the remaining hats off the local store shelves before they weren't available anymore. Jacquart, on the other hand, had a completely different thought: He was going to buy the company.
It took two months to finalize the purchase, but Jacquart grabbed the hat and took off running with it and hasn't looked back.
When Jacquart bought the company in 2001, it was producing and selling approximately 3,000 hats a year. When he first started, Jacquart was a one-man operation at a small, downtown Ironwood tailor shop. Now, his company, Jacquart Fabric Products, is contained in three buildings that span over 80,000 square feet and house the latest equipment. Oh, yeah--and he now produces about 75,000 hats annually, a number that will likely continue to grow.
Whereas the Stormy Kromer was once found on the shelves of now-hard-to-come-by locally-owned outdoors stores and hung inconspicuously over various hunting products and off the antlers of mounted trophy deer, it is now readily available at the massive outdoor giants such as Cabela's and Gander Mountain. It was named to the Gear Hall of Fame by Field & Stream Magazine in 2008 and was gushed about in an article in Sporting Classics Magazine in fall 2009. They also have more than 2,660
Facebook fans. It can even be purchased online on the company
website.
Nation-wide sales or not, locals were still buying the sturdy Kromer.
"My brother bought it for me for Christmas in 2006," says Kristen Parkhill, who hails from Menominee, but now lives in Boston. "I mentioned wanting a Kromer for a long time--the men in my family had been wearing the blaze orange types for years during hunting season. I thought it was the perfect hat for a lady who isn't afraid to show off her Yooper heritage."
Parkhill can still be found donning her Kromer, and even reads a children's book about the cap that she reads to her son, Caleb, who has been wearing Stormy Kromers since he was born.
"I still love mine, but I would love to buy more and buy one for my husband--it's rare to find any hat that actually fits his ginormous head, but thankfully Kromers come in all sizes," Parkhill playfully jabs at her husband, Jason.
Despite the boom in production and sales and the growth of the hat to places such as Boston, some things never change. Workers at Jacquart Fabric Products create each Kromer from the original 13-piece pattern designed by Stormy and Ida more than a century ago. The caps do come in a a dozen colors and have a huge range of sizes available, including infants and one that measures 16-and-1/4-inches and was custom-made for and is worn by Northern Michigan University's mascot, Wildcat Willy. And Jacquart stands by his product--each Kromer comes with a lifetime warranty.
While the Kromer hasn't always been an Upper Peninsula product, it has found a home here among the people that helped popularize it. Like so many who were born elsewhere and moved here, the Stormy Kromer has earned the right to be called Yooper.
Sam Eggleston is the managing editor of the U.P. Second Wave and a full-time freelance writer. He was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula. He can be reached via email.