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Smart concept: ‘Don’t be such an idiot’

Lacey Eggleston, owner of Eggleston Embroidery, embroiders a “Don’t Be That Idiot” hat in her shop in Oroville, California, on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. (Kyra Gottesman/Mercury-Register)

What started as a joke has turned into a blessing for a small home-based business owner and the Butte County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team.

Lacey Eggleston lost her brand-new home for 45 days when the Camp Fire tore through Paradise in 2018. It took another year for the Chico resident and her husband, Dustin Eggleston, to “make it to Oroville,” where they now live and “love it” on 5 acres with their two young children, Sawyer and Isabelle, and two quarter horses, Anne and Pluto. It’s also where Eggleston runs her small commercial embroidery shop, Eggleston Embroidery.

Because of their history, Eggleston said she and her husband tend to “pay close attention when there’s a fire nearby.” On July 2, despite it being far from their home, they watched the news conference about the Thompson Fire in northeast Oroville. During the broadcast, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea strongly urged people not to set off fireworks, including the “safe and sane” ones, because of the serious fire hazard. The potential for another incident was too great, the sheriff said, telling people in no-nonsense, direct terms: “Don’t be that idiot (who starts another fire).”

“My mom called me the next day and jokingly said, ‘You should put that quote on a hat,'” Eggleston said. “So I did. I embroidered ‘Don’t Be That Idiot ~ Sheriff Honea’ on a hat and gave it to my brother. And just for fun, I posted a picture of it on my social media pages and told people to private message me if they wanted to order one.”

Dustin Eggleston shared the post with others, including his girlfriend Mary Barker, a deputy sheriff, who in turn showed it to Honea, who “loved it” and invited Eggleston to meet him at the Thompson Fire command center in the Thermalito Forebay on July 4.

“I had made 26 of the hats at that point and took one for the sheriff and a few others,” Eggleston said. “Mary (Barker) took a picture of me and the sheriff wearing the hats and posted it on social media. That night it blew up. I had hundreds of messages from people wanting to buy ‘Don’t Be That Idiot’ hats.”

Eggleston recently received a bulk shipment of 150 hats to embroider, and within four days of posting them on social media, she had sold out. Since the hats were selling like hotcakes, she ordered 500 more to keep up with the influx of orders—not just from locals, but from as far away as Washington, Montana, New Mexico and Florida. Many of the orders were for multiple hats, with some asking if they could buy them by the dozen. To “be fair” and keep up with orders, Eggleston set a limit of five per order.

“I kept thinking, ‘What have I done?’” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?’ I just did the first one on impulse, as a joke, and now I have this explosion in my business.”

While Eggleston’s embroidery business has grown from a “hobby business” when she first opened in 2022 to a “small business” with regular customers placing between five and ten orders a month for anything from one piece to dozens of pieces, the “Don’t Be That Idiot” hats have taken Eggleston Embroidery to the next level.

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around it,” she said. “I have new people, new companies reaching out to me saying they’d love to use me for their embroidered products. It’s amazing, my husband and I. We’ve always dreamed of expanding the business, and now that dream has become a reality because of the ‘Don’t Be That Idiot’ hats.”

Eggleston said she knew “right away” that she would donate a portion of the proceeds from the hat sales to a local nonprofit. After meeting and talking with Honea, she chose Butte County Search and Rescue.

“I wanted to give back to the community that took such good care of us during and after the Camp Fire,” she said. “That was just really important to me and my husband.”

On July 16, Eggleston was able to pay her unexpected good fortune forward. She took a check for $1,000 to BCSR.