Our Story
One idea. One garage. One cut-up hat that started everything.
How It Started
Notch started because Paul was tired of fighting with his hat and sunglasses.
He liked wearing his hats low with a curved brim, but his sunglasses would bump into the brim. Sometimes the only way to make the two work together was to turn his hat backward.
Then one day, while watching golf, he noticed a golfer wearing his cap pushed up so the brim wouldn't interfere with his glasses.
The idea clicked.
Paul grabbed one of his own hats, cut notches into both sides of the brim, put it on with his sunglasses and realized:
“Whoa. This works.”
He started wearing the modified hats around. Before long, a friend saw one and asked:
“Can I get one?”
That was the beginning of Notch.
Two Placements
The Standard and the Terra
Paul had always been a big Oakley fan and wore Oakley Fuel Cells at the time.
That became the Standard Notch, and it's still our original placement — dialed in for wraparound, sport, shooting, and safety-style glasses, and still the right Notch for a huge number of our customers.
What it wasn't built for was the longer temple arms of many other types of eyewear.
Aviators, Wayfarers, fashion frames, prescription glasses — a whole category of eyewear sat differently against the brim, and the Standard placement wasn't designed to serve it. Terra wore Ray-Bans and knew it firsthand. Customers were telling us the same thing.
Terra pushed for a second placement for years. Paul took some convincing — the Standard worked, and changing anything about an already successful product isn't a small decision. But she kept at it, and eventually we tested it: same patented idea, cutouts moved farther out on the brim.
It worked.
We called it the Aviator Notch at first. Then we renamed it the Terra Notch, after the person who wouldn't let it go.
Today it's one of our best sellers. Paul wears one.
Two placements. Same patented idea. A better way to pair your hat with the eyewear you actually wear.
Not sure which one fits your glasses? Our Perfect Fit Guide will tell you.
Our Beginning
Built From the Garage Up
Notch officially launched in 2013, but the work started well before that — the first patent application was filed in 2010.
Paul had already built a successful real estate business, which he still runs today. We could have stopped there.
Instead we funded a hat company out of our own pocket, out of our garage in Yuma, Arizona — no investors, no roadmap, and a patent application we paid for ourselves. Terra was working as a dental hygienist at the time, and researched the patent landscape before we spent a dollar on product.
Our two kids grew up alongside Notch and both worked in the company over the years. One of them helped Paul design the Notch logo.
We learned the business by building it — manufacturing, branding, e-commerce, intellectual property, and everything nobody warns you about.
Who We Are
Patented. Veteran Owned. Still Independent.
Paul's original idea became U.S. Patent No. 9,027,165, filed in 2010 and granted in 2015.
The patented brim cutouts create clearance for your eyewear, eliminating the interference that keeps most hats from sitting where you actually want them. During active use, the cutouts also grip the frames and arms of the eyewear, helping hold your glasses in place.
Paul is a United States Marine Corps veteran, and Notch has been veteran owned and operated from the beginning.
More than a decade later, our team serves customers and dealers around the world. We build custom headwear for businesses, military units, law enforcement agencies, shooting teams, and government organizations, and we license the technology through select partnerships including Oakley and VIKTØS.
Notch has been independently owned since day one and is still based in Yuma, Arizona, where our team handles everything from custom orders to the person who picks up the phone when you call.
Notch-less
Love the Hat, Skip the Notches
Somewhere along the way, customers made something clear: they loved the hats whether or not they needed the notches.
That's why we make Notch-less versions of select styles — the same premium materials, the same comfort, the same fit and build quality, without the brim cutouts. For people who don't wear eyewear, or don't wear their hat low enough to need them, and just want the best hat they've ever owned.
You choose your Notch — Standard, Terra, or Notch-less — on each product page.
Giving Back
Still Notch
We founded this company on the belief that it's better to give than to receive. For every Notch hat we sell, we provide a meal to a child in need through our partner, Children's Hunger Fund.
Buy an awesome hat, feed a child. That's a win-win if you ask us.
What started with one cut-up hat has grown into something much bigger than we imagined. But the idea behind it hasn't changed: your hat and your eyewear should work together.
The war between your hat & sunglasses is over.
Paul & Terra Cunningham
Co-Founders, Notch
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