Ryan Santistevan

The Republic | azcentral.com

One summer day in 2014, Phoenix-based inventor Andy Birutis received a phone call from an old friend and colleague, Sean Daw, who wanted to catch up, talk about the good old days and grab some lunch.

Birutis, 58, said the two sat down, talked for about 30 minutes and nostalgia kicked in. They decided to create something again together and had two necessities in mind: incorporating radiant barrier technology and something useful for the outdoors.

"We ... felt that headwear was the logical place to start because of the importance of protecting your head from solar rays, both heat waves and UV waves," Birutis said.

The meeting at the hamburger joint launched a two-year project that resulted in a hat that has extreme sun-blocking abilities.

"It's the same technology that has been used in the creation of space suits and spacecraft to help protect astronauts from solar rays," Birutis said. "We've taken that technology and applied it to sun hats."

He said the hat, which they have branded as the Alchemi sun hat, can reflect up to 80 percent of the sun's heat away from the body and protect against 99.8 percent of UV rays.

A $50,000 idea

They entered the hat into Pfizer and Indiegogo's Project Get Old competition this year. The program seeks to find a product that could have an effect on healthy aging, said Sally Jacob, a Pfizer spokeswoman.

The hat competed with more than 75 submissions of other products and won, earning the duo $50,000 along with a trip to New York for workshops to educate the winners about how to expand their product line.

"Our hope is that Project Get Old and Andy's win remind us that there’s plenty of room for more innovative ideas for healthy aging, and that we can decide to try to manage how we get old," Jacob said in a statement.

Dr. Ronald S. Davis, a member of the American Academy of Dermatology board of directors, said any hat that has a 4-inch brim and is not made with a porous material offers good protection.

"Straw hats are cool but often let too much UV through," Davis wrote in a statement. "The main purpose of a hat in protecting from the sun is to shade the face."

Alchemi Labs, the company the duo started, also makes hats designed for use in river and desert environments. Davis said the desert hat appears to keep the consumer cooler when outside because of its long form covering the neck.

Two factors influence the chances of getting skin cancer: latitude and skin type. Higher latitudes present a higher risk for sunburns and increase the risk of skin cancer. The more fair the skin, the greater the potential for skin cancer, Davis said.

Sun protection

Hornacek's Golf in Scottsdale, Arizona Hiking Shack in Phoenix and LowerGear Outdoors in Tempe sell the product, and it also is available on Amazon.com.

Arizona Hiking Shack co-owner Dale Stewart said Birutis came to the store about a year ago to see if they would be interested in selling the sun hat.

"A lot of our clothing is SPF, simply meaning if we can prevent those UVs from penetrating through our clothing as well as our headwear, then we are going to be much more less affected by skin cancer and melanoma," Stewart said. "It is one of (Birutis') original inventions to his design but using a reflective surface is not anything new. NASA has been using it for some time."

Stewart said the technology may save lives given the unrelenting desert heat in Phoenix. He noted that five people died due to heat-related injuries during one week in the Phoenix metro area this past summer.

Birutis said the hat has received positive feedback from sporting shops, and interest also has come from people who work in gardening, construction and landscaping.

Birutis said he has worked on thousands of consumer products over 30 years and he believes all ideas are a combination of elements in different ways. There is no such thing as a new invention, he said.

Soon the company will release a new line of hats and then apparel and accessories. It is considering making blankets along with ball caps, golf caps and bucket-style hats.