New Era apologizes for wrong area code caps, which Royals didn’t see before release
The New Era Cap Company made headlines Tuesday for all the wrong reasons.
A line of “Local Market” caps for all 30 Major League Baseball teams was released Tuesday and within hours they were removed from the company’s website.
Royals fans were unified in their dislike of the Kansas City cap, which seemed to fail to realize the team is located in Missouri. The Royals’ social-media team roasted New Era by tweeting an image of its Twitter biography that included its love of pigs, saxophones and Kansas area codes.
All were featured on the caps.
It wasn’t just Royals supporters who took New Era to task, as fans of other MLB teams took to Twitter to express their disgust. One of those who tweeted about the caps was the St. Petersburg, Florida, mayor who pointed out the Rays’ cap didn’t include the correct area code.
So how did New Era get the area codes wrong?
A spokesperson for the Royals said the team had never seen a design for the caps prior to their release on social media Tuesday. On Wednesday, New Era apologized and said leaving out the 816 area code and others was an “unintentional design mistake.”
Here is the company’s full statement:
“In November of 2020, New Era launched a range of MLB licensed caps titled the ‘Local Market’ collection via our retail partners and our own website,” Mark Maidment, Senior Vice President of Brand for New Era, said. “These were only created for retail purposes and never intended for on-field use. One of the design features incorporates the local area codes of the respective MLB teams.
“It recently came to our attention that a few caps omitted a relevant area code. In light of this, we removed the collection from our website so we could review the design accuracy of all the caps.
“We apologize for any unintentional design mistake with regard to this collection.”
