Cowboy clothes made to last: Schaefer Outfitter finds Steamboat a comfy fit.

• Author: Bedor, Mark
• Position: Company overview

How many people out there are doing what they really love to do?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"I am!" declares Rick Grant, owner of Western clothing manufacturer Schaefer Outfitter.

But like any good cowboy movie, it's been one tough ride for the Steamboat Springs businessman to reach this point. The Schaefer Outfitter story begins in Jackson, Wyo., where the business was founded in 1982 by an outdoorsman named Cub Schaefer.

Known from the start for his high quality Western wear, Schaefer's classic "duster"--that long coat of Old West legend--became a huge fad in the mid 1980s. Schaefer sold dusters by the thousands, at least for a couple of years.

But by the end of the decade, the boom had gone bust, and Cub had lost control of his company to his banker.

Rick Grant, meanwhile, was working for Soda Creek Western Outfitters of Steamboat Springs. He'd been hired to redesign the Western retailer's catalog, which quickly doubled Soda Creek's customer base. At the same time, a Soda Creek partner joined a group of investors who bought Schaefer from the bank. Impressed with the job Grant had done in boosting business at Soda Creek, the investors hired him to run Schaefer in 1990, at the ripe old age of 30.

Grant had grown up in ranching communities, graduating from Western State College in Gunnison with a business degree.

After a stint selling ads for USA Today in California, he formed his own marketing company and found immediate financial success designing brochures, catalogs, and packaging for golf-equipment manufacturers, date growers and other businesses in the Palm Springs area. But weary of the desert heat and homesick for the Rockies, Grant returned to his native Colorado, where a family friend opened the door at Soda Creek.

With the lessons learned from his marketing and catalog experience, Grant went to work resurrecting Schaefer, which despite its difficulties had managed to both stay in business and maintain its reputation for quality Western wear.

"Nobody could say he didn't know what he was doing when it came to designing stuff," says Grant of Cub Schaefer, who was no longer connected to the company, and died of a heart attack in 2000. "He just couldn't manage his finances."

Grant's first task was to "re-image" Schaefer, coming up with new clothing styles, a new logo, and a first class catalog, then selling the new image and products to retail buyers at wholesale clothing markets, like Denver's International Western Wear Market.

But while...