Connect
To Top

Meet Domenic Foitno, Brent Hanke and Christian Joseph of HAT-TAC in Tempe

Avatar photo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Domenic Foitno, Brent Hanke and Christian Joseph.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Domenic, Brent and Christian. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In august of 2017, Domenic Fotino was enrolled at Arizona State University after a previous two years of playing baseball at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. He had a class that assigned a project to “find a problem in your everyday life, and fix it”. So he was in the last hour of finding something to submit for a grade and was looking all over his house for something to post. He looked into his room and saw all of his hats hanging on thumbtacks, which worked, but left the hats at a point and shifted every which way. The OCD kicked in and he started to align them all perfectly up and down to be more visually appealing. This is when a light went off in his head and the idea of having a curved platform for the hats to hang on, to decrease the damage during storage and at the same time look more visually appealing happened. This is when HAT-TAC came about.

After about six months the class ended. Domenic got an A+ on the project and later on met Christian Joseph who helped him redesign the shape of the HAT-TAC to allow for easier and faster 3D printing. Deciding to pursue this journey, they got their first order in early 2018 and saw the future that could be if they put their mind to it. After finalizing the design and testing the market with feedback Domenic and Christian had their friend Brent Hanke join the team. Brent had the correct contacts with his family’s background in Injection Molding to have HAT-TAC make the correct steps to become mass manufactured. In May of 2018 the team pitched at an event called Demo Day through ASU’s Venture Devils program and walked away with $10k in seed grant funding.

In early July the team was reached out to by Tempe local company Hat Club. They wanted to know how to get HAT-TAC in their 23 stores nationwide by black Friday 2018. The team had nine weeks to fulfill the purchase order and started grinding away at how to make this become a reality. We pulled through and got it to them in time. They then launched on e-commerce at www.hat-tac.com and pitched again at ASU to win another $5k in seed grant funds. After the 2018 holiday season the team was excited to make 2019 their year.

We strived to have our product 100% made in the USA and over 75% made right here in Tempe, Arizona. HAT-TAC is now one of Amazon.com best sellers in the Hat rack category. We realized early on that the secret sauce of our company is in our Provisional, Design, & Utility patents, which allow us to be the only curved hanger of plastic to have a customizable backplate design. This opens the doors of collaborations with companies like Hat Club, Caterpillar, Branded Bills, Goorin Bros, MLB, NHL, and many many more. Others can take ownership of our product because it not only showcases the name HAT-TAC but also their brand name front and center. Hats are the largest portion of market share in promotional giveaways and the team wanted every hat to be paired with a matching HAT-TAC. We go by the motto of HAT-TAC being a perfect promotional product because unlike a squishy ball, phone charger, or nick nak, HAT-TAC will be stuck to someone’s wall and looked at over and over again for months or years to come. People won’t throw it away like they would other promotional products. We partnered with some of the largest names in the industry and are getting great feedback since starting the promotional journey since its such a unique new item.

What started off in the 20 foot by 20-foot house garage of Domenic Fotino has now grown into a 2,000 square foot facility 10 minutes from ASU’s Tempe campus. Domenic takes the time to return and talk to incoming freshmen in the entrepreneurial program about his story and how to take the steps to start something with little to no funding. During the talks he offers an internship opportunity to work alongside their team to gain hands-on experience of how to grow something from ground zero. Every semester dozens of kids interview and a handful are selected who fit the entrepreneurial mindset culture that the company strives to create in their shop.

By having such hands-on ability with a dedicated team we have taken interns’ ideas and started other companies with them by using their shared skillsets. One example of this is a company called Blastr Wrapz and is the brainchild of Miles Mabey. He started with us as an intern in early 2019 and has been a huge asset. We tasked him with finding more ways to keep our large format printer running. He is the President of the Nerf club at ASU and had the genius idea of creating the first-ever sticker decal upgrade pack for Nerf blasters. We supported him in every single way we could and became an equal partner with him in the start-up, which has blown up over the past few months on YouTube and Amazon. The goal is to have our stickers sold in every nerf toy isle in America.

With the ball now rolling bigger the team has the ability with eight 3D printers and a large format printer to fulfill orders of stickers, banners, product design, and rapid prototyping.

Due to COVID-19, the team converted all their 3D Printers to only print face mask respirators to help with the shortage of n95 masks. The goal is to create an up and coming print shop called Print Pro AZ with their first project to design, manufacture and FDA certify reusable face-masks to be donated to front line workers. We currently launched a GoFundMe to make this become a reality and help the state of Arizona with a shortage of PPE. The link can be found here —-> https://www.gofundme.com/f/face-mask-shield?pc=ot_vs_poster_r&member=4171814&utm_medium=print_sign&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet.

There is a lot more to their story but to sum it all up the guys at HAT-TAC are as entrepreneurial as it can get and tackle and project presented to them. We were featured on fox ten Arizona here to see more —-> https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/made-in-arizona-scottsdale-company-gives-new-way-to-hang-your-hat

Has it been a smooth road?
It has been the exact opposite of smooth. Every day our team is dealt with struggles. We were able to start our company from seed funding at ASU and have had many peaks and valleys that have shaped our company into what it is today. Finding the correct adhesive for HAT-TAC has been one of the hardest struggles our team has overcome. We have tested over 100 different types and have implemented three that at first, weren’t strong enough on some surfaces, then were too strong, until we came across a local supplier who has a foam adhesive used on Hollywood movie sets that hold strong and can be removed with no damage.

As being entrepreneurs, we deal with tens of hundreds of different problems every single week that we brainstorm how to defeat to the best of our ability. Some harder than others, but that is just part of the journey.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
HAT-TAC is a wall safe, fully customizable, damage-free headwear hanger designed to keep the shape and look of a hat longer than any other product on the market. We have three patents and two trademarks witch gives us the ability to stand out from the rest. Also with our product being hand finished and 100% sourced, manufactured and packaged all within 350 miles of Tempe Arizona, we take pride in being a revolution of the importance of American Made.

Blastr Wrapz is easy to apply sticker decal upgrade wraps for nerf guns. Print Pro AZ we print stickers, banners, 3d prototypes, graphic design, manufacture and have the ability to take ideas and turn them into a reality very quickly and deliver quality in everything we strive to do.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
None of us would ever imagine being anywhere else than Arizona to have our business. Domenic was born in Flagstaff, Christian was born in Ahwatukee, & Brent has lived in Tempe/Scottsdale a good majority of his life. The team met at Arizona State University, which has supported them to the fullest with everything to follow their passion. Our city has the perfect mixture of manufacturing, innovation, and normal life activities within a short drive. Silicon Valley was a major start-up hub years ago, but recently Phoenix has been taken over by individuals such as ourselves to create a new generation of innovation and grow the entrepreneurial community. We would recommend Arizona for any start-up or new life journey.

Pricing:

Contact Info:

Suggest a story: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.

Related Items

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in