Forget MAGA – this Ottawa entrepreneur is selling the ‘strong and free’ hat – Ottawa Business Journal

On By Littum

An Ottawa entrepreneur is showing his patriotism with a new online store selling “strong and free” hats in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent comments about annexing Canada as the 51st state.

Liam Mooney, founder of Ottawa-based Jackpine Dynamic Branding, launched an online store last week that sells red and navy blue tuques and baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Strong and Free” and “Canada Is Not For Sale.” The hats are also available with French text — “Fort et libre” and “Le Canada n’est pas à vendre”.

“I was really bothered,” Mooney said of Trump’s comments. “As a former political operative working in Ottawa (and) as a branding and political consulting strategist, I just saw the opportunity to do something quickly because of the nature of this issue, and being a proud Canadian, it seemed that it could be a fun, cheeky way to respond to this problem.”

He said the online store is a “small act of patriotism to respond to a big problem.”

Support for the hats is already pouring in with Ontario Premier Doug Ford donning a navy blue “Canada Is Not For Sale” baseball cap while speaking to the media in Ottawa on Wednesday. Ford is in Ottawa to attend a meeting between the country’s prime ministers and the prime minister regarding Trump’s threats of higher tariffs.

Wearing his own “Canada is not for sale” baseball cap, Mooney told OBJ on Wednesday that the prime minister’s office called Tuesday morning asking if a hat could be made for Ford in time for the first ministerial summit.

“It’s really hard to do. I worked with a bunch of Ottawa people … We worked from 8:30 in the morning until about 7 or 8 p.m. trying to make it happen for him,” Mooney said.

Mooney said he worked with The SAM Group, a customization retailer, on Colonnade Road to convert the artwork into “a very specialized embroidery file” and with Lids Canada at the Rideau Center to produce the hat.

Since Ford’s appearance Wednesday morning, Mooney said traffic to the online store has been “absolutely insane.”

“We get five new emails (for orders) every minute. It’s from coast to coast and global ex-pats in the US, in the UK and all over the world,” he said.

Mooney told OBJ that in 90 minutes he had sold $20,000 in hats.

“It is surreal and exciting. We went from concept to premiere within a week,” he said.

Shawn Hamilton, principal at Proveras Commercial Realty, also showed his support for the hats on LinkedIn on Tuesday.

“Today I ordered these hats for our office as a testament to our Canadian pride,” Hamilton wrote on LinkedIn.

Since launching last Thursday, Mooney has already seen some sales, with the tuque being the most popular choice. Baseball caps are $40 and tuques are $35. They are similar to the “Make America Great Again” or “MAGA” hats popular in the United States

The hats themselves are sourced from Vietnam or Bangladesh, according to the site.

“Being overwhelmed by early interest, we’ve been working to quickly transition from getting (the) store up two days ago to an even more ‘made in Canada’ story,” he said.

Mooney said he is “in talks” with Canadian boutique manufacturers to produce the hats.

“Universally, people love it. People ask me about the website. They share it with their friends. They hope to buy, and I think they also want to take action, and this could be an avenue for them,” said Mooney.

His website reads: “As questions of our national sovereignty are thrown into the spotlight by our neighbor to the south, this collection is a playful invitation to Canadians to declare: Canada is not for sale. Messy federal politics aside, we are still the true north , strong and free.”

While the initiative is still in its infancy, Mooney said that once the store turns a profit, he and co-creator Emma Cochrane, a principal at Jackpine, hope to donate proceeds to a charity.

“We’re hoping to work with a veterans-related charity and even something local,” he said.

Mooney said the choice to use Shopify, which has its roots in Ottawa, to host the site, strongandfreehat.ca, was no accident.

“(It was) a conscious choice, for sure. It’s a great Canadian company, an Ottawa company, and I’m proud to use their platform,” he said.

“It is an exciting project. My company just moved back downtown to an office this week and this is part of our way of bringing fresh creative energy to the city.”