Dear friends and Rand Hat Customers,
This year started early with our trip to Cowboy Christmas in Las Vegas. The National Finals Rodeo is always a great experience with hundreds of thousands of cowboys and cowgirls.
After packing and loading for the Road to Vegas, it started snowing. Well this is nothing new after making hats in Montana for over THIRTY years. We are used to Montana weather. About an hour out of town the freeway was closed because of a white out. Big truck, trailer and four wheel drive, only 900 miles to go.
Twenty Four hours later I finally got to Salt Lake City. This was only supposed to be an 8 hour drive! Traffic was unreal. Because of the storm you would have thought there was a mass evacuation. Two lanes of traffic and the worst weather I had driven in for many years.
I decided to stop and have lunch with my friend Randy Brooks in Mona, Utah which is just outside of Salt Lake City. Randy who is a great friend, customer, and team roper showed me his new barn, horses etc. It started snowing again. Another 14 inches of snow fell. With the freeway closed again we felt like we would never get to Vegas. Two days later I finally arrived. The 200 Hat samples for the show are safe and sound. Unfortunately we had a broken windshield and mud from bumper to bumper. I get in line the next day to let the Union in Vegas allow me into the convention Center.
You need plenty of patience for this, because when you own a little company the Union doesn’t give you as much flexibility as a big dog. Seven hours later they finally let me in to another line to get our displays inside. Finally the next day my friend and employee Jorge arrives in Vegas and we began the set up and steaming of the hats.
Vegas was full of great customers from all over the planet. And the Rodeo was great, with the best talent on earth. If any of you out there have not been, go. It is a sold out event in the city of bright lights. You will not be disappointed.
There are so many of our customers that have become ours friends it made our time on the road a lot better.
So, now to continue to catch you up, January brought us the Safari Club International show, Reno Convention Center. This will be our 23rd year with this group and the people from all over the world, Europe, Africa and almost every place in between. We had great conversation with customers from Cuba, and South Africa. It really is a great experience every year. The wild life exhibits are like no other place.
I finished a dozen new hat styles and hat bands for our new outdoor collection, some Safari styles ,and some new Saddle club collection hats. Watch “Under Wild Skies” on cable and you will see our hats. We have a new special on the Outdoor channel and we have a video of us making hats. You can order it from us and, we will mail it on a DVD or flash drive. The video contains all of our new collections. My friend Josh whom works on many projects with us throughout the year has been in overload on the new Saddle Club collection, which is now very western and is now being sold in all places of the earth. Thanks to Josh for his artistic talent and drive in helping us finish this collection. We have not loaded all the pictures on the web site yet, but will be there soon, available on a DVD. I just need to get Austin to load some more for us. You will soon be able to turn through the pages of the catalog without us mailing you a thing. We are going to cut down on our postage bill, and give you all instant selection in page by page views.
We had a great exhibit at Denver for the WESA wholesale market; this is in January every year during Stock show. Be sure to look for a dealer near you on our dealer list.
We went down the Road to Reno convention Center for the FNAWS, which we have been supporting for over twenty years. We also are active members of the Rocky Mountain Elk foundation.
Look for us at Bishop Mule days which is the largest Mule show in the US. They have a parade there that is large enough to take up about 2 hours of our time every year. It is a small town (Bishop California) with a large event.
This event is Memorial Day weekend every year. We have a lot of customers from California and Nevada that attend and you will see Mules from all over the US. being shown and sold.
The road warriors are wearing thin this year because of all the diesel prices being so high, and the airline seats keep getting smaller and the air travel is more difficult.
We will have a big trunk show in Switzerland for 2012 and will update everybody on that as we go.
Since this will be our first blog, watch for updates soon. Don't forget we are open Monday through Friday Mountain time, if you need to call. I will personally call you after hours if you need.
Ritch and the Rand crew
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