Every Hat Has a Story: How Renee Farris Scales One-of-a-Kind Design with the xTool P3

Business Snapshot

• The Craft: One-of-a-kind custom hats built around personal stories, with select designs selling for as much as $250.
• The Production Change: Full 12 × 24-inch sheets can run in one job instead of being split into separate batches. Renee estimates production is now about 150% higher than with her previous P2-series workflow.
• The Scale: Bulk hat orders typically range from 25 to 100 pieces, with one order reaching 300. After about six months, Renee said the P3 was close to paying for itself.

Every hat has a story.

At Blue Ridge Designs, Renee Farris turns personal memories into one-of-a-kind custom hats—some selling for as much as $250. One design honored a three-time cancer survivor; another was created for direct descendants of Doc Holliday. Customers are not simply buying a hat. They are wearing a story that belongs only to them.

The xTool P3 helps Renee bring those stories to life with the precision required for detailed portraits, lettering, and layered designs—while giving her the capacity and consistency to take on growing custom and bulk demand. The question is no longer whether she can create something personal, but how far she can scale it without losing what makes each piece unique.

A Designer Since Thirteen

Renee’s design career began long before Blue Ridge Designs. At thirteen, she was already working in graphic design. She later became the editor of her school newspaper and yearbook, then received a full scholarship to study graphic arts and desktop publishing.

That foundation still shapes the way she works today. Blue Ridge Designs, based in Tennessee, produces commercial print work, bridal gifts, trophies, acrylic awards, charcuterie boards, caps, trucker hats, and wide-brim felt hats. Renee leads the design work alongside her husband and two other team members.

Hats have become one of the business’s strongest categories because they give Renee room to combine graphic design with deeply personal details. A portrait, a landscape, a military reference, a flower, or a few carefully chosen words can turn a familiar object into something no one else owns.

When Personalization Meets Growing Demand

Renee serves both individual customers and local organizations, including businesses and a college. Her typical bulk hat orders range from 25 to 100 pieces, with one order reaching 300. In-person events are currently a major sales channel, giving her a way to showcase what Blue Ridge Designs can create and connect with customers looking for both custom pieces and bulk orders.

Renee brings custom hats to events

Completed batch of custom hats

Even as bulk demand grows, one-of-a-kind commissions remain an important part of Renee’s work. At one event, a Desert Storm and Desert Shield veteran asked her to create something he could not find anywhere else. When he received the finished hat, he told her, “I have a hat that nobody else in the world has.” Another design featured Renee’s son-in-law, an avid fisherman and guide for a local lake. She has also received 2027 preorders for graduation hats, including a design showing a barrel racer wearing her cap and gown on horseback.

Why the P3 Entered the Business

Renee had already been using an xTool P2-series machine, but its working area placed limits on material size and production time. A 12 × 24-inch sheet had to be cut in half and processed as two separate jobs. That meant more material handling, repeated setup, and two separate production runs.

When Renee saw early information about the P3, she focused on practical production needs: a larger working area, higher speed, wide-angle and side-view cameras, three focal lenses, and the precision required for detailed custom work.

The P3 soon became her main machine. The earlier xTool still has a place in the shop, but Renee now relies on the P3 for most of the work that moves through her daily production schedule.

From Split Sheets to One Production Run

The larger working area changed a basic but costly part of Renee’s workflow. Instead of dividing a 12 × 24-inch sheet and running two batches, she can process the full sheet in one job. That reduces repeated setup and helps her move from design to finished pieces with fewer interruptions.

Consistency matters just as much as speed. Tennessee’s humidity and temperature can affect materials, especially tri-layer acrylic. Renee found that the P3 required fewer day-to-day adjustments and produced more consistent results across changing conditions.

She also uses the machine according to the needs of each project. The automatic wide-angle camera helps with positioning, while manual focus remains available when she wants tighter control. The three focal lenses give her more control over precision and detail, especially for bitmap engraving and smaller patches.

What Changed in the Business

Renee estimates that production with the P3 is about 150% higher than with her previous P2-series workflow. This is her real-world estimate rather than a controlled benchmark, but it reflects the practical gains she sees in larger runs, fewer repeated setups, and more dependable results.

The machine has also moved quickly toward covering its investment. After roughly six months, Renee said the P3 was close to paying for itself. Renee connects that progress to the hat business, where processing full sheets has reduced production time and material waste.

The remark captures the next constraint in Renee’s business: demand for production time, not a shortage of ideas.

The Value Behind a Custom Hat

A Blue Ridge Designs hat is not priced like an undecorated blank because the customer is not buying an undecorated blank. The work begins with an original design and laser engraving. Depending on the piece, Renee may then add hand-burned details, paint, decorations, and other finishing touches. The final value comes from how those elements preserve a specific memory or identity.

That is why select custom hats have sold for as much as $250. Customers often accept Renee’s quote without negotiating because the finished piece cannot be separated from the story it was created to tell.

The P3 supports this value in two ways: it gives Renee the accuracy needed for intricate details, while providing a more repeatable production foundation for both one-of-a-kind pieces and larger orders.

Designing the Next Stage

Renee is now building the next sales layer for Blue Ridge Designs, including a stronger online catalog. Events have helped customers discover the work in person; a more developed digital storefront can make those designs easier to find beyond Tennessee.

Custom hat patch display and hat racks at Blue Ridge Designs.

See more of Renee’s work on Blue Ridge Designs’ Facebook page.

Growth still begins in the same place it did when Renee was thirteen: the design itself. She describes the process as thinking ten steps ahead—considering not only how an image looks, but how every layer, material, and production decision will work together.

The P3 gives that thinking more room to become a business. It helps Renee produce more without flattening the differences between customers, orders, or stories. Scale, in her shop, does not mean making every hat identical. It means having the capacity to make more people feel that one was created only for them.

Continue the Journey

With the xTool P3 at the center of production, Renee Farris is building a business that can tell more of them—one precise, personal design at a time.

Ready to scale? [Shop xTool P3]

Still have questions? [Book a Free 1-on-1 Demo]