Hills Hats
Hills Hats
Hills Hats has been making beautiful, high-end hats in Wellington for well over a century - since 1875 to be exact! Originally opened on Lambton Quay by an Englishman, Chas Hill, the current Hills Hats factory is in Petone and has been owned by the Smut-Kennedy family for the past 19 years.
The Smut-Kennedy family has strong ties to Lower Hutt, having made ties and fashion accessories under the Eskay brand in Petone for over 70 years. Family run with family values, Hills Hats has employed many of its staff for decades.
As demonstrated in their Instagram feed, Hills Hats are a healthy mix of history, heritage, fun and creativity.
Hills Hats supplies specialist hat shops around the world, but they also have a strong local presence, having made hats for notable sports teams like the All Blacks and Black Caps, as well as popular musicians like Fat Freddy’s Drop and Shapeshifter. Hills also makes the uniform hats for Air New Zealand, the police, fire service, and beyond. To sum up, they’re the definition of iconic.
Evangeline and Sherry reached out to Your Sustainable Workplace in the winter of 2018. Like most small businesses in Wellington, Hills didn’t have a ton of extra cash lying around for running sustainability initiatives, so we were happy to support them with their application for waste minimisation funding from the Hutt City Council.
With their funding application approved, we were able to conduct a waste systems assessment at their factory, as well as run an engagement workshop with their 30 odd staff. Hills went so far as to close down production for an hour so that all their staff could attend the workshop - tu meke Hills!
Our assessment found that Hills had some really cool sustainable practices in place (like taking hessian sacks from coffee makers and using them to make material for hats, then giving the off cuts to orchards for mulch), but that they needed to separate out their waste streams and provider clearer signage and guidance to staff.
Off the back of our assessment and recommendations, Hills went on to introduce three additional waste streams collections and put waste stations throughout the factory, with our workshop helping to educate and engage staff in the new systems. Hills Hats continues to be a stylish, innovative and sustainable company today