New Era Celebrates Centennial With Yearlong Collaborations

The world looked much different when New Era hat company was founded by Ehrhardt Koch in 1920. The leap year began with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, most women in the U.S. were just granted the right to vote with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, the U.S. was in the beginning of Prohibition and in the midst of a depression that kicked off the decade that would be known as the Roaring Twenties. Koch in that year, parted ways with a haberdashery to start E. Koch Company, renamed New Era in 1922, in Buffalo, N.Y., with a loan from his sister. Although a paperboy cap, one of his earliest creations, would set the foundation for the company, it’s actually Koch’s son, Harold, who noticed a decrease in demand for fashion caps and decided to put the focus on baseball caps instead. Harold in 1934 began producing caps for the Cleveland Indians, which coincidentally won its first World Series Championship in 1920, and he developed the company’s signature 59Fifty cap. He would also sell the design directly to Major League Baseball teams long before licensing deals existed. Harold’s son, David, took over the family business and, during

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