Schaefer Outfitter by Miriam Lucero
education, it kind of comes naturally. I was in charge of growing the Soda Creek Western Mercantile Cata- log, which was going great. I had doubled the number of their buyers in 18 months. The owners along with a group of investors purchased the defunct Schaefer Outfitter assets, which wasn’t much, patterns, account list and tradename. One of the investors tried running it for about 6 months and it was going nowhere. I was approached by the owners to take over the reins.
I We were fortunate to have a Q&A with Rick Grant, President of Schaefer Outfitter.
Who designs the clothing for Schaefer Outfitter? Over the years, I’ve done all of the designing. Nowadays, I’m the concept guy and concepts are refined by my Design/ Production Manager.
Then we go through a series of sampling to review fit, functional and looks. How many stores are you in now? About 200
Has the business model changed since 1982? Definitely. The first 20+ years, it was a very traditional model whereby all sales were made to retail stores and they sold to the end-user. Since then, it has become multi-channel meaning sales are made through many different ways i.e. web site, direct mail, email broadcasting, social marketing, consumer shows, etc. It’s much more expensive to grow multi-channel compared to traditional wholesale. In the traditional wholesale model, product was made based upon orders taken in first quarter for third quarter delivery. After 2008, retailers were unable to write future orders due to the economy, so we pro- duce and stock our entire product line on a year-round basis. We’re basically in approximately 100-150 stores depending upon the time of year. Name of first store your line of clothing was in? That is a very good question, prob- ably Lou Taubert Ranch Outfitters in Casper, Wyoming when I started.
How did you get started in textiles, and creating the Schaefer Outfitter product line? I kind of fell into this by accident. I have no technical textile design or production
started with re-branding the company, hiring sales reps and redesigning the line. I had it back on track in about a year. It was a lot of fun. Things were much simpler back then.
What does the future hold for Schaefer Outfitter? We have a lot to look forward to. The first part of the year I spent putting together a minor re-branding strategy keeping in mind we were relocating to Fort Worth, Tex- as. We re-shot the entire product line in May in Idaho and Texas including 22,000 photos, 36 hours of video and 6 hours of drone giving our web site, mailers and catalog a major facelift. In addition, I introduced sever- al new styles and collections, including quilted wax cot- ton and nylon, lightweight waxed cotton and a series of brush jackets just to name a few. All homeruns! We are also focusing a lot more energy in social marketing to introduce Schaefer to a younger audience. Our com- mitment to always being American Made will continue to be one of our greatest assets. Lastly, the move to Fort Worth, Texas was probably the single best deci- sion I’ve ever made for the brand. We’ve doubled the size of our distribution area and added a flagship store with everything Schaefer plus home goods. It has a big WOW! Factor.
www.schaefer-ranchwear.com/ 46 DECEMBER / JANUARY 2018 I HORSE & AG MAGAZINE
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