Inside The Southern California Factory That Makes the Donald Trump Hats

Mai-Duc went inside the factory and delivers this report.

When Brian Kennedy’s family business was first asked to make the now-famous Donald Trump trucker hats, he knew he would need to address his workers, many of whom are Latino and speak Spanish.

“I said to them, ‘We’re not political. We’re here to work,’” Kennedy tells the Los Angeles Times from the second floor of the factory, the steady whir of sewing machines below him. “And I haven’t gotten any negative comments.”

Dozens of employees, almost all of them Latino, continue to work, sweeping scraps of fabric from the floor, peering over glasses as their deft hands assemble one hat after another. All around them sit stacks of freshly minted camouflage-print trucker caps, with the real estate mogul and 2016 presidential hopeful’s familiar “Make America Great Again” slogan emblazoned on the front in orange.

The hats, known best in the signature red with white font, have inspired hipster fashion trends, Halloween costumes, a make-your-own-Trump-hat generator and even a short-lived rumor they actually were made in China.

(They weren’t, Kennedy assures).

But they have been a boon to Kennedy’s family business, Cali-Fame, the Carson-based hat manufacturer that pulled in more than $270,000 from the Trump campaign last quarter, according to campaign finance records.

The merchandise was a portion of the more than $825,000 the Trump campaign dropped on bumper stickers, T-shirts, hats and other promotional gear, the largest category of Trump’s spending outside of travel.

The hats have seemingly been a boon for Trump’s campaign too. Most of the caps sell for $25 each and appear to have boosted the billionaire’s small donations column, making donors of those who purchase them, ironically or not.

Kennedy and his brother, Tim, Cali-Fame’s vice president of sales, have been reluctant to wade into the political fray and bristled at the media coverage they received for weeks after campaign finance disclosures were released.

Kennedy downplayed the role Trump’s orders have played for his business as the holiday season begins, but several employees said this is the busiest November they’ve seen in years, with plenty of overtime work to go around.

Yolanda Melendrez, 44, has worked for Cali-Fame since 1991. She started as a machine operator, sewing together the seams of baseball caps, and now works as a lead on the floor, roaming as she checks on the flow of work and supervising other sewing machine operators and embroiderers.

She says she’s heard some of the things Trump has said about immigrants and Latinos like her, but she tries to ignore them.

“A lot of what he says about Latinos is not correct,” she says just as a buzzer signals the end of her Saturday overtime shift and workers line up to clock out. The sound of Spanish punctuates the air as the machines sputter to a stop. “When we first got the order [for the Trump hats], I said to myself, ‘Just wait until he sees who’s making his hats. We’re Latinos, we’re Mexicans, Salvadoreños.’”

But first and foremost, she knows she has a job to do.

“You know,” she adds, “he’s giving us a lot of work. Keeping us busy.… It’s a job, I get paid to do it and it pays my bills and my rent.”

And for that, Melendrez says, she’s thankful.

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.

Kennedy says that since his father bought the business in 1977, Cali-Fame has weathered rising labor costs, changing technologies and cutthroat competition from cheap overseas labor.

“To be a local manufacturer in the United States, there’s so many challenges, not only in America but in California alone,” he says while surveying the massive warehouse.

For decades, the company had its bread and butter in golf tournament caps and other promotional headwear.

More recently, the manufacturer has branched out into street wear and urban fashion, launching a brand that has focused on supporting burgeoning clothing companies. Wood panels separate a portion of the warehouse for a showroom of sorts, allowing Cali-Fame to host an occasional sale. On a recent weekend, curious deal-seekers browsed straw fedoras and baseball caps of varying designs, but no Trump hats were in sight.

“The old cliche is that you roll with the punches,” Tim Kennedy says. “We’ve done that many times, and we’re constantly changing what we do and how we do things.”

But it’s been increasingly difficult to stay competitive, the Kennedy brothers say. Rising healthcare costs, the possibility of a $15 minimum wage countywide and workers’ compensation laws have been a “juggling act” to keep up with, they say.

Brian Kennedy says his company has been making hats for Trump’s golf courses for about a decade, which is how he got connected with the campaign.

These caps — “the five-panel trucker hat with cord,” Kennedy will tell you — have become a solid front-runner when it comes to 2016 campaign kitsch.

“It’s a classic,” says Tim Kennedy. “Everything comes full circle in the fashion business. It’s straight from Middle America to New York and Los Angeles