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"Have fun and make $$$."
 I've been called a lot of things over the years, and many of them I can't put into print. But one thing I have been called is one of the best marketers on the border. That means a lot. The border is a tough place to cut a deal and a tough place to survive. We've not only survived on the border, we've thrived.
Our business is better and more exciting than ever before. At the end of 1999, we closed the retail portion of our business and went back to our old, wholesale-only system. On Mondays through Fridays, we concentrate on filling orders that come in from Homer's Moose Camp in Alaska or Joe's Boots in Muleshoe, Texas or Indian gambling casinos or DisneyWorld in Florida. Some of our best and biggest customers are family-owned mom and pop stores, and they are wonderful to deal with. Because we are a wholesale operation, we are able to close on weekends, which allows our long-time, loyal employees to enjoy more quality time off. It also allows us more time to spend with our wonderful German shepherd dogs. Our dogs are a big part of the El Paso Saddleblanket family. Nowadays, we have El Cid II, Bob, Sadie II and her puppy, Babe. They are quite a handful, but we feel like they take care of us as much as we take care of them.
Even after thirty years, I still enjoy visiting trading posts across the country. I recently called on some of our old trading post customers in Gallup, New Mexico on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Wow, what great country and what great people! Unlike Santa Fe or Scottsdale, Gallup is a wholesale town. Folks come into Gallup from all over the world to buy from the hundreds of turquoise Indian jewelry stores in the area.
On this recent trip, I sold a lot of the wool trade blankets, doubleweave saddleblankets, cowhides and Mexican saddles to the Indian traders.
The old Route 66 highway stores were buying a lot of our small stencil place mats, scorpion paperweights and tourist curio items. Lots of the gas stations and curio stores give away our inexpensive arrowheads with a fill-up or a purchase over $10. WORKS FOR THEM! I got a big kick out of seeing all the giant highway billboards promoting our nine cent arrowheads, "3 for $5!"
It made me happy and proud to realize that our merchandise is still popular on Route 66. You know that if you are still selling to the same clients for thirty years, you are doing something right. That is the best way to run a business. Get customers and keep them. Our customers are as much a part of El Paso Saddleblanket as we are. We weave together suppliers, designers, products and retailers, just as our craftsmen in Juárez weave together fine rugs. In 1994 we wrote a book for our customers called How To Start and Operate Your Own Southwest Store and Trading Post. It is now available for free over the internet at www.elpasosaddleblanket.com.
Of course, just as we keep in contact with the old customers, we are developing new customers as well. I got a phone call a few days ago from a young couple who had just started selling our products on a part-time basis. They asked me a question. "Dusty, with all this talk about recession and so on, what would you do if you were us?"
My answer was simple. "Recession, huh? This is what I'd do. I would smile, then laugh and thumb my nose at this recession business, then go full-time selling El Paso Saddleblanket products and make more money and have more fun than the law should allow. Go for it! Today it is so much easier because we have the best selection, the best designs, the best prices and you can receive your orders faster than ever before. Our business is always better during economic downturns because you can offer your customers better quality at lower prices. We are reliable traders who have been in business for more than thirty years. We don't cheat or play games with prices. No get rich promises. No franchise fees. No phony sales kits. No hype. Just proven, good quality, beautiful merchandise that has been selling steady for years."
I firmly believe that no matter how sophisticated technology gets and no matter how far the world reaches into cyberspace, people will always have a special appreciation for works of beauty that are shaped by the hands of artisans using centuries-old skills and techniques passed down from their elders.
The reproduction of age-old crafts fulfills two very important functions that connect the past to the future:
1. It is a powerful transmitter of culture from one generation to the next.
2. It allows artisans to improve their lot in life with better health
care, education and communications with other segments of
society.
As traders, we help connect the past to the present. We fulfill the needs of consumers, we make a good living for ourselves, and we send money down the line, to support hundreds of artists and craftspeople. I don't ever tire of saying HANDwoven, HANDpainted, HANDmade and HANDcrafted because this is the very essence of what makes Southwest merchandise so special. Thank goodness there are no computerized machines that can duplicate these crafts.
I promise you one thing. If you call El Paso Saddleblanket, you will always talk to a real, live person and never some fuckin' press one, press two, automated answering machine.
El Paso Saddleblanket keeps evolving, and we enjoy evolving with it. How do we combine our work and our marriage? I don't know. Maybe Bonnie can explain better than I can.
"We are with each other twenty-four hours a day, every day: entertaining and relaxing, but most of all working from the time we get up until the time we get to sleep. Most married couples could not endure our twenty-four, seven schedule. But somehow it works for us.
"Both of us are constantly thinking business. Someone asked if we ever take a vacation. No need, really. Every business trip is part vacation. Every day at the office is part vacation. We love spending time with our dogs, going to lunch with friends, etc. We would be bored to tears if we were isolated from our business. Some of the nicest people I've ever met are our customers and our employees. Its all kind of a far flung, yet closely knit family.
"I can't imagine ever retiring. Dusty and I go to the warehouse every day except when we are gone on business trips to South America, Europe, Africa, India and Asia. We make at least twenty trips to various places in Mexico every year as we have been doing for thirty years. It's always a busy schedule, but it's our life, we love what we do and can't imagine doing anything else."
Things are changing with our family and friends. My Uncle Shorty Henson recently passed away in Abilene. He rode the last mile to the graveyard by his favorite means of transportation: a horse-drawn wagon.
I recently talked to my dad, Mack Henson, age eighty-one, who still owns and operates Fun Valley Resort in South Fork, Colorado. He told me that things were going well. All the motel units, the log cabins and the RV camping spots were full. The 1,500 guests at Fun Valley were all enjoying themselves. Mack still enjoys running the resort he has operated since 1959.
I'm proud that my Dad is an independent businessman who never retired. The idea of working for a boss and then retiring never made any sense to him, and it never made any sense to me. I'm proud of my work, my wife, my employees, my customers and my vendors. I would never think of retiring. Trading is not only my business, it's my life. And it's
a great life.
Bonnie has enjoyed it just as much as I have.
"I'm not sure that the life we have had and the business we have built could ever be duplicated. It's been great fun, but I wouldn't want to have to start over. As the many incidents in this book demonstrate, we didn't do everything right. Dusty just has the knack of turning a challenge into something new and interesting. I haven't always been happy about some of the situations we've gotten INTO, but I'm continually amazed at Dusty's ability to get us OUT OF a bad situation. He never stops thinking and planning. It's so hard to write a closing chapter to our story because I don't know what we might get into in the years ahead. I know there's still a big project out there, just waiting for us."
Retire? Never! Why would Bonnie and I ever retire from the work that we love? There are just too many more adventures still to come as we continue to create the amazing story of the El Paso Saddleblanket Company.
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