Have A Great Summer: The Four Words That Became HAGS Clothing

HAGS Clothing started with a phrase most people have written or received at least once. For founder Tyler Batliner, “Have A Great Summer” became more than a yearbook message—it became the idea behind a brand.

There aren’t many business ideas that start in the back of a school yearbook.

HAGS Clothing is one of them.

Before HAGS was a clothing brand, it was four words students had been writing to each other for years:

Have A Great Summer.

Usually shortened to HAGS, the phrase is simple. Someone signs your yearbook, writes HAGS next to their name and hands it back.

For Tyler Batliner, founder of HAGS Clothing, those four letters eventually started to mean something more.

“I always liked HAGS because almost everyone knew what it meant,” Batliner said. “You didn’t have to explain it. You saw HAGS and immediately thought of summer.”

That simple connection eventually became the starting point for a clothing brand.

Why Summer?

There is a reason summer creates such strong memories.

When you’re younger, the last day of school feels different from almost any other day of the year. You walk out knowing you have an entire summer ahead of you.

There are trips that haven’t happened yet, nights with friends that haven’t been planned and weekends with nothing on the calendar.

For Batliner, that’s the feeling HAGS is supposed to capture.

“Summer has always been something people look forward to,” he said. “Going to the lake, travelling, being outside, staying out late or just hanging out with your friends. Everybody’s summer is different, but I think most people understand that feeling.”

Instead of inventing a complicated meaning for a new clothing company, HAGS started with a feeling people already understood.

Turning Four Letters Into Something You Can Wear

Batliner started HAGS while attending the University of Missouri.

Like many first-time founders, he didn’t begin with a large team or a perfect plan for what the company would look like years later.

The idea came first.

Could HAGS become something people wanted to wear?

More importantly, could the brand keep the feeling behind Have A Great Summer rather than simply turning HAGS into another logo?

That became an important part of developing the company.

There are countless businesses selling T-shirts and hats. A new brand needs a reason for someone to remember its name.

HAGS already had one.

Someone could see the four letters and recognize a phrase they had known since school.

The challenge was turning that recognition into an actual identity.

More Than a Season

One of the interesting things about building a brand around summer is that summer eventually ends.

That raised an obvious question: What does HAGS become during the rest of the year?

The answer eventually came from Batliner’s college experience.

At the University of Missouri, Saturdays—particularly during football season—had their own feeling.

Friends got together. People tailgated. The town filled up. Everyone had somewhere to go.

Batliner started seeing similarities between those Saturdays and what originally attracted him to the idea of summer.

Both were things people looked forward to.

Both were usually spent with other people.

And both created memories that seemed to go by too quickly.

That’s how Have A Great Saturday became part of HAGS.

It didn’t replace Have A Great Summer.

It grew from it.

“Have A Great Summer is the heart of HAGS,” Batliner said. “Have A Great Saturday came later. It’s really the same feeling, just another way of looking at it.”

That distinction remains important to the company.

Have A Great Summer is the origin. Have A Great Saturday is the evolution.

Building Around Moments People Remember

That idea has also influenced the products HAGS creates.

The company has expanded from its original concept into casual apparel, hats, college-town designs and gameday clothing.

At first, college apparel might seem disconnected from a brand called Have A Great Summer.

For Batliner, the connection is the memories behind both.

People often develop strong relationships with places during certain periods of their lives.

College is one of them.

A student may live somewhere for only a few years, but the friendships, weekends and experiences from that place can stay with them much longer.

HAGS has started building products around those connections.

One example is a rope hat featuring the word COMO, a common nickname for Columbia, Missouri.

The design doesn’t need to explain itself.

Someone who has never spent time in Columbia might simply see a hat.

Someone who went to Mizzou may see four years of memories.

That’s the type of connection HAGS wants its products to create.

TheRealTbat and the Beginning of HAGS

Batliner didn’t enter the clothing business without an audience.

Before building HAGS, he had spent years creating social media content through TheRealTbat, eventually growing an audience of more than 200,000 followers and generating more than 75 million views.

That gave HAGS something valuable from the beginning: a way to reach people.

But it also taught Batliner that attention and business are not the same thing.

Someone can watch a video without spending anything.

Buying a shirt or hat requires a different decision.

Having an audience made it easier to introduce HAGS, but it didn’t remove the need to create products people wanted, build a trustworthy website or provide a good customer experience.

In some ways, it made the distinction between a creator and a brand even clearer.

TheRealTbat could help people discover HAGS.

The long-term goal was for HAGS to give them a reason to stay.

Keeping the Original Meaning

As a young clothing company grows, there is always pressure to chase whatever is popular.

New styles emerge. Social platforms change. Customer tastes move quickly.

HAGS has changed too.

The company makes products today that weren’t part of the original plan, and that will probably continue.

But Batliner doesn’t want growth to erase the reason the company was created.

That’s why Have A Great Summer remains important.

It gives HAGS somewhere to return when deciding what the company should represent.

A summer hat and a college gameday shirt may look completely different.

The experiences behind them don’t have to be.

Both can represent going somewhere, being with people you care about and enjoying a moment before it’s gone.

A Message That Can Travel

That also gives HAGS room to grow beyond its current college and gameday audience.

Summer isn’t specific to Missouri.

It isn’t specific to America.

Going on holiday, spending a weekend with friends, travelling, attending a sporting event or looking forward to warmer weather are experiences people have around the world.

That makes the original HAGS message surprisingly flexible.

The company may have started around one interpretation of those four letters, but the idea doesn’t need to stay in one location or one category.

For Batliner, that’s part of what makes the future of HAGS interesting.

Have A Great Summer

Most brands spend a lot of time trying to come up with a message people will remember.

HAGS started with one people already knew.

Have A Great Summer.

It’s something people have scribbled into yearbooks without giving it another thought.

But behind those four words is an idea almost anyone can understand.

Summer doesn’t last forever.

Neither does college.

Neither does a great Saturday.

Eventually, the trip ends, everyone goes home and Monday comes around again.

So enjoy it while you’re there.

That’s the story HAGS Clothing is trying to tell—four letters at a time.