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Key Takeaways Zach Dunn and Chason Rabitaille started Mad Hatter, a hat and apparel company, with $15,000 in 2020.
Now the eight-figure business consistently goes viral on TikTok, leaning into funny, culturally relevant products.
Dunn estimates that TikTok Shop comprises 65% of Mad Hatter’s revenue.
Zach Dunn never set out to sell hats. He grew up in a one-stoplight town in rural Georgia, in a family of farmers and entrepreneurs who were never afraid to take a leap of faith and try different ventures.
In his early 20s, about a decade ago, he and his father walked into a bank with a business plan and walked out with a $250,000 loan to start a farm.
“That was my experience with starting from the concept of an idea and then bringing it to reality,” Dunn tells Entrepreneur in a new interview.
They farmed cotton and tobacco and did well for a year or two, until one bad year wiped them out and left Dunn in “a heap of debt” that he still had to repay. “I learned not to grow too fast, to take my time and really think through my decisions,” Dunn says.
Zach Dunn. Credit: Mad Hatter
He had dropped out of college to start the farm. After the farm collapsed, Dunn went back to school as a business major and sold cars on the side. He worked his way up in car sales, eventually becoming a general manager and then a finance manager at a dealership. He and his future cofounder and college roommate, Chason Rabitaille, were both selling cars and studying when they started seeing Facebook ads for hat companies. “We realized that we could also do that,” Dunn recalls.
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