POST #5 -- Rupert Ramblings

My final stop-over in Idaho was in the tiny burg of Rupert, population 5,554.

 

The Southern Idaho desert town of Rupert, originally known as Wellspring, came into existence due to two factors critical to life on the frontier.  A plentiful supply of water.  And the railroad.  The water came from a well drilled by the U.S. Reclamation service to bring irrigation to the region just after the turn of the last Century.  The railroad initially came to deliver supplies to the construction workers laboring on the irrigation project.  But it soon brought settlers eager to prosper in the agricultural boom that would result from the newly irrigated lands.  It also brought the lumber and materials to build a town.  And in 1905, over a period of just 6 months, the town grew from a single business to 64 businesses, a school, dozens of residences and several “opera houses.”  In its early days the town enjoyed great prosperity and even lays claim to having built the nation’s first all electric public building, a high school.

Today, Rupert is still in the middle of a thriving agricultural region.  But the economics have changed, and the town is no longer the hub of commerce or social life.  It’s almost a ghost town.  There are many empty storefronts around the town square.  Most of the town’s active storefronts seem to serve the Hispanic population that provides the bulk of the local farm labor. 

But one of the original Rupert businesses that is still active on the main square is Hoggan’s Western Shop.  How could I not take the opportunity to peek inside a Western Shop that has a giant horse affixed over the entryway? Well, because I initially thought it was closed.  The front windows were clouded over, and the few items displayed there were shrouded in dust.  There was no signage on the storefront.  Nothing inviting at all.  But I pushed on the door anyway.  And I entered  to discover a  bizarre and completely disorganized conglomeration of very tired, old oddments and gear that looked more like the residue of a 1950s flea market than a thriving Western Shop.  In fact, I quickly realized that Hoggan’s is not a thriving Western shop.  The only evidence of Western goods is a modest rack adorned with a dozen or so nicely-tooled belts. 

I felt like an intruder.  But then Kevin Hoggan emerged from the back work room to greet me.  And we began talking.  The 53-year old Kevin  has been running the shop since his father Robert retired more than 20 years ago.  It was Robert’s grandfather – Kevin’s great-grandfather, a Scottish immigrant – who founded the business at the time the town itself was founded.  There aren’t too many 4-generation businesses that survive.  It’s pretty safe to say that Hoggan’s is the only one in Rupert.

It came as no surprise to learn that Hoggan’s enjoys very little walk-in retail business.  In fact, Kevin confessed, most of the items on and around the counters and cabinets were not even for sale.  They were simply bits and pieces of ‘stuff’ that had accumulated there, along with lots of dust, over generations.  And he explained that the absence of Western wear, saddles and tack was due to the fact that Hoggan’s suppliers had cut him off because he was unwilling to purchase their minimum quantities.  “I had one bootmaker – a single brand – that wanted me to buy 24 pair of their boots in every order.  Well at that time we were only selling 24 pair of boots a year, and that was for all brands combined.”  Yet the business persevered, due primarily to a small but steady demand for custom made tack and for the repair of saddles, small leather goods… and even the town’s tattered wind-blown American flags.

And then one day a field superintendent from the Bureau of Land Management walked in hoping to have his old leather field sack repaired.  Kevin had to tell him it was irreparable. So they began talking about the design and fabrication of a new bag.  And they quickly realized that the best design would be of canvas or nylon.  And a new enterprise was born.  The old leather-works took a distant back seat. “I never liked working with leather anyway,” Kevin tells me.

Kevin now is the exclusive supplier of all of the BLM gear bags for a 3-state region, and he enjoys plenty of other BLM orders from other regions.  By posting his prowess on the internet --  www.hoggans.com -- he discovered that a whole world of new business was awaiting him.

It’s hardly a sophisticated online presence.  Check it out.  But it has been enough to let Kevin emerge as the king of the niche canvas/leather/nylon fabrication world.  He can do things that even the Chinese can’t do… because, he says, they won’t produce the small quantities that he will.  Hoggan’s now makes all sorts of custom canvas/nylon/leather gear for forest workers, telephone linemen, hikers, climbers and campers.  Kevin even makes custom nylon dolphin slings for marine researchers and wildlife rescue teams.  You didn’t think you could buy that sort of stuff at WalMart, did you?

I loved talking to Kevin and hearing the history of his family business and the story of his recently re-invented enterprise.  I thanked him for his time and his conversation, and I reluctantly stepped back out the front door into the 21^st Century.  But not without first placing a custom order for one of his eco-friendly re-usable grocery totes fabricated from the reclaimed chicken feed sacks that were stacked in the back of his workshop.  I’m not kidding.  I chose a design showing two fluffy chicks silhouetted against a barn. “It’ll take me 3-4 weeks before I’m able to make it and send it to you.”  Fine by me, Kevin.  Fine by me.