Fit-Rite Headwear, Inc.

Fit-Rite Headwear, Inc., is one of the area's industries that delivers a Wilkes-Barre product throughout the United States and Canada. Considered a leading producer of hard hat winter liners, Fit-Rite also manufacturers other safety accessories such as highway safety vests, disposable sweatbands, industrial painting hoods, welding caps, and mining caps and belts. The company was founded in 1922 as the Wilkes-Barre Cap Manufacturing Company by Louis Scherz, a European immigrant whose family cap-making tradition dated back to the mid-19th century. The firm was incorporated as Fit-Rite Headwear in 1957 and remains a family-owned business to this day.

Scherz originally catered to the area's and the nation's mining industry by producing some of the nation's first mining and fire-fighting helmets, patented seamless aluminum lunch kits, work gloves, battery belts miners goggles, and cloth miner caps with a patented "Double Safety" lamp holder. During this period Wilkes-Barre Cap also produced a line of children's and men's headwear, including souvenir caps for the 1939 World's Fair.

After the disastrous Agnes Flood of 1972, Fit-Rite moved to its present location at 92 South Empire Street. Today the family has its third generation active in the business as Mrs. Schonwetter has been joined by her son Steven, and daughters Roni and Patricia in the operation of the company.