Passage Hat Co.

Passage Hat Co.

Where: Revelstoke, BC

Year Established: 2021

Website: passagehat.co

Owner: Founder Steven Mulcahy and co-founders Chris Taylor and Chris Troelstra

We make hats for passionate outdoor people.

Give us a brief description of your manufacturing processes and philosophy.

We bring the same functional design focus usually reserved for other garments to headwear.

How many employees and/or contractors do you work with?

We have three co-founders, all part-time.

What brought you to the Kootenays and how long have you been here?

Steven moved to Revelstoke 1.5 years ago. Beyond the great skiing, biking, hiking, and more, he and his wife wanted to move to a smaller community that they could settle into and contribute to.

Tell us about the history and relative work experience of your founder(s).

Steven was born in the UK but escaped to the mountains as soon as he could, bouncing between Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand and Japan. He settled in BC in 2016. He’s a super passionate skier and was a ski instructor for six seasons before moving indoors to satisfy his inner gear nerd as a boot fitter for three more. Today he lives in Revelstoke and can usually be found skiing the resort or Rogers Pass in the winter or riding his mountain bike in the summer. When not outside in the mountains, he’s the CEO of AvenueHQ, a SaaS technology company serving the real estate industry. Before Avenue, he was involved with several early-stage tech start-ups in various industries.

Chris Taylor also hails from the UK but is now based in Squamish. He was an accomplished ski instructor for 10 years before moving into the brewery industry. Today he is the Territory Sales Manager for Vancouver Island Brewery and he continues to be a passionate skier who can be found either at Whistler or deep in the coast mountains through the winter (and sometimes throughout the other seasons too). In the summer Chris is a passionate trail runner working at getting the second part of the Squamish 50:50 wrapped and having a mountain-bike-injury-free season.

Chris Troelstra came to skiing later in his life but nonetheless has become a passionate skier over the last five years. Today he is the VP of Finance at Circle.so, a leading B2B SaaS company. He previously founded AvenueHQ and has a background as a CPA (CA) designated accountant.

Describe the mission, vision, goals, and aspirations of your company.

Passage Hat Co is on a mission to bring a functional design focus to headwear for outdoor recreationalists. We believe you shouldn’t have to put up with wetted-out cotton beanies or unpackable baseball caps while out adventuring. Instead we want to use the same high-quality materials and manufacturing processes that are currently reserved for other garments to bring you headwear that makes your best days even better. We’ve started with a ski/snowboard backcountry specific winter 5-panel hat but plan to expand our product line both within this activity and to other activities such as mountain biking, trail running, surfing, hiking, etc. Our vision is that over time our users will own a quiver of our hats enabling them to select their headwear for their activity in the same way they select other clothing.