Everybody wants a Red Sox cap
Published 12:00 am Saturday, October 30, 2004
With the Boston Red Sox now the official World Series Champions, the New Era Company here in Demopolis is working overtime to get out the demand for baseball caps.
Alvin Williams, manager of New Era in Demopolis, said that his crews are working as fast as possible to get out the hats, including a high demand for the Houston Astros, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the New York Yankees in addition to the Boston Red Sox.
“We’ve had to continue making that production [for the other three teams] and then try to put in a significant amount of Boston down the line,” Williams said.
“So it couldn’t have been any better.
Unless it had gone to seven games.”
Many of the New Era employees are excited about the fact that the Red Sox came back and won eight straight games to claim the World Series Championship.
“As it came down to the last two teams involved, we already had a tremendous amount of volume going through, probably more aimed at New York than it was at Boston,” Williams said.
“So we had to turn on a dime over the last 10 days and try to turn out as many Boston hats as possible.
Sales are phenomenal, but remember this is the first time this team has done this since 1918.
So we can’t make enough at this point.”
Every facility that New Era has is working as quickly as possible to produce Boston Red Sox hats in addition to the schedule already in place.
“We’ve had a great deal of fun with this series,” Williams said.
“More so than last year.
Last year at this time, with the Marlins pulling it out, the schedule that we has was much less than we have now.
Now there are not enough hours in the day.”
Locally, many residents of Demopolis and the surrounding area have been excited about the Red Sox victory over St. Louis in this year’s World Series.
“There are a lot of people in this town who are old-time Yankees fans, but I’ve found that there are a lot more Boston fans then I knew,” Williams said.
“I’ve been talking to a lot of people here and a lot of fans are happy the Red Sox won.”
With a large amount of production taking place at the local New Era factory, how it will affect the Demopolis economy has yet to be seen.
“What we are looking for is uniformity of schedule,” Williams said.
“You’ve got to remember that in this industry, a lot of peeks and valleys in manufacturing are based on sales.
So, keeping a flowing sales going is what we are after.
And this just helps maintain that.
Now that baseball season comes to an end, we’ll need other things like the gold market and the NBA, so we’ve got a lot of things to balance out our schedule.
This is just one more step in that process.”
Talking to some local residents here in Demopolis and one can see the excitement that’s struck over the Red Sox for the first time in 86 years.
“I’m very excited about Boston winning the world series,” said Randy Johnson. “I love the Red Sox and I’m just really happy that they’ve finally w2on the world series again after waiting so long to be back on top in major league baseball. It’s an awesome feeling.”