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New Era Cap Company (commonly known as New Era) is an American headwear company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. It was founded in 1920 by Ehrhardt Koch, who borrowed $5,000 from his aunt to start the E. Koch Cap Company - renamed New Era Cap the following year. Production began at 1830 Genesee Street, Buffalo, with 14 employees, producing 60,000 caps in the company's first year. The company's founding product was the men's Gatsby cap, popular at the time. Since 1993, New Era has been the exclusive on-field baseball cap supplier for Major League Baseball (MLB), a position that defines its market identity. It holds 500+ licences across sports leagues and other properties globally. In August 2024, New Era acquired '47, a Massachusetts-based headwear company, expanding into the lifestyle headwear market. In February 2026, New Era became the Official Jersey & Headwear Partner of the United Football League (UFL) - marking its first entry into football uniform manufacturing beyond headwear. Bruce Popko was named president in April 2026.
No single named creative director is documented. Design is driven by licensing requirements (team logos and colours specified by leagues and franchises) supplemented by in-house development of cap construction, material selection, and limited-edition design. The 59Fifty cap form (Harold Koch, 1954) remains the core design object. Special-edition and custom-made hats (from 2023) suggest an expanding design programme beyond standard licensed merchandise.
Ehrhardt Koch founded the company in 1920; his son Harold Koch redesigned the fitted pro cap in 1954, naming it the 59Fifty ("Brooklyn Style") - the model that became New Era's signature product. By 1965, New Era was supplying caps to approximately half of the then-20 MLB teams. In 1993, New Era was granted the first exclusive MLB licence to produce on-field baseball caps for all teams (then 28, now 30).
League expansion: 2012 (NFL exclusive sideline rights); 2013 (Australian cricket's Big Bash League); 2015 (Manchester United); 2016 (NBA, WNBA, NBA G League official headwear provider); 2018 (CFL official outfitter - headwear, uniforms, sideline apparel; first football uniforms); 2021 (Rugby League World Cup 2021 merchandise partner); July 2024 (NHL official hat); February 2026 (UFL Official Jersey & Headwear Partner).
Chris Koch was named CEO in 2001. The company secured naming rights to the Buffalo Bills' stadium in August 2016 (renamed "New Era Field"); it ended the arrangement at its own request in 2020, with the stadium reverting to Bills Stadium. '47 acquisition (August 2024) adds a brand known for vintage and lifestyle headwear adjacent to New Era's sport-primary positioning.
Core product: the 59Fifty fitted cap (all MLB teams; the defining on-field baseball cap). Extensions:
Own-retail (neweracap.com) and wholesale to sports merchandise retailers, team shops, and department stores. Core revenue model: sports licensing - 500+ active licences. The UFL partnership (February 2026) marks the first official uniform supply contract beyond headwear, expanding from accessories into full apparel design and manufacture. '47 acquisition (August 2024) adds a second headwear brand to the portfolio. No outbound licensing of New Era's own designs is documented - the company is the licensee, not the licensor.
World's leading sports-licensed headwear manufacturer. The MLB exclusive on-field licence (since 1993) positions New Era as the definitive authority in American sports cap design - any cap worn on a Major League Baseball field is a New Era product. 500+ active licences create a portfolio that spans virtually every major North American professional sports league. The company is the primary beneficiary of sports-licensed headwear culture, including collector and streetwear demand for team caps as fashion accessories. The 2024 '47 acquisition signals a move toward the broader sports lifestyle headwear market.
New Era's entire product model is built on the application of graphic surface design to a single object - the baseball cap:
Cap as surface design canvas: The 59Fifty cap is the standardised vehicle through which team logos, wordmarks, colourways, material treatments, and graphic motifs are applied as surface design. Every MLB team cap represents a specific graphic design applied to the same base form. Variation across 500+ licences produces one of the broadest applied graphic design programmes of any single product category in fashion accessories.
Colourway and limited edition culture: New Era produces caps in team-specific colourways, as well as seasonal alternate colours, special-edition collaborations, and custom-made variations. The documentation from 2023 confirms this is an active and expanding product line. This mirrors the sneaker colourway and limited edition model in terms of how graphic design and colour create collector demand.
Documented surface design incident (2007): New Era voluntarily pulled three styles of New York Yankees caps from shelves because the surface designs were considered gang-related - two caps featured "bandanna-like patterns" around the top, and one had a gold crown. A NYPD detective stated "bandannas represent gang flags." This incident is a documented case in which the graphic surface applied to a headwear product produced commercial, cultural, and enforcement consequences - confirming that cap pattern design carries documented social meaning.
Graphic identity across leagues: As the official cap supplier to MLB, NFL (sideline), NBA, WNBA, NHL, and CFL, New Era is the manufacturer responsible for producing the physical, garment-surface version of each team's graphic identity - logo placement, colourway, material specification, and trim details are all applied surface design decisions within the constraints of each league's uniform standards.
New Era Cap Company (commonly known as New Era) is an American headwear company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. It was founded in 1920 by Ehrhardt Koch, who borrowed $5,000 from his aunt to start the E. Koch Cap Company - renamed New Era Cap the following year.
New Era's entire product model is built on the application of graphic surface design to a single object - the baseball cap: Cap as surface design canvas: The 59Fifty cap is the standardised vehicle through which team logos, wordmarks, colourways, material treatments, and graphic motifs are applied as surface design.
Core product: the 59Fifty fitted cap (all MLB teams; the defining on-field baseball cap).
World's leading sports-licensed headwear manufacturer. The MLB exclusive on-field licence (since 1993) positions New Era as the definitive authority in American sports cap design - any cap worn on a Major League Baseball field is a New Era product.
com) and wholesale to sports merchandise retailers, team shops, and department stores. Core revenue model: sports licensing - 500+ active licences. The UFL partnership (February 2026) marks the first official uniform supply contract beyond headwear, expanding from accessories into full apparel design and manufacture.
Ehrhardt Koch founded the company in 1920; his son Harold Koch redesigned the fitted pro cap in 1954, naming it the 59Fifty ("Brooklyn Style") - the model that became New Era's signature product. By 1965, New Era was supplying caps to approximately half of the then-20 MLB teams.
United States