Automation, Cheap Imports, Shrinking Demand Take Toll : Custom Saddle Industry No Longer Rides Tall

DENVER —  A cowboy’s saddle these days is likely to be a plastic job from an assembly line in Dixie. His spurs may be imported from Korea, his horse blanket from India.

And, with the fading of the Urban Cowboy fad, the demand for Western saddles is less than half what it was a decade ago.

All that has spelled hard times for the proud old saddlers of Denver, once the nation’s capital of handmade Western saddles.

Such old-line Denver companies as H. H. Heiser Co., Fred Mueller Co., Western, Powder River and Colorado Saddlery Co. at one time took orders from cowboys and horse lovers across the nation for their fine handmade saddles that can last a century.

Today only Colorado Saddlery Co. survives in its aging, dark, five-story brick building in lower downtown Denver. Six of the nine saddle makers’ stalls up on the second floor gather dust.

“With the romance of television series like ‘Gunsmoke,’ ‘Bonanza,’ all the little kids wanted to be cowboys. The horse was the thing to have. Then, that ran out of style,” said Pershing van Scoyk, co-founder of Colorado Saddlery.

‘Star Wars’ Factor

Kids were swept up by the “Star Wars” era, he said. Their fascination shifted from the horse and Old West to the new frontier of space, starships and far galaxies.

Suburban ranchettes where the more affluent families lived out their cowboy fantasies gave way to apartments and condominiums.

Production of Western saddles nationwide shrank from 350,000 a year in the mid-1970s to 150,000 today.

Van Scoyk, now Colorado Saddlery’s executive president, recalls the custom saddle industry’s peak a few years back. Nine saddle makers at Colorado Saddlery were turning out 200 to 225 saddles a month. Today’s monthly production has shrunk to 75, produced by only three saddle makers.

Large Price Variance

Price had a lot to do with it. A hand-tooled custom saddle built by Colorado Saddlery’s former rodeo bronc buster, Guy Hayworth, runs to $1,700. Down at the mass-production saddleries in Chattanooga, Tenn., Gainesville, Ga., and Yoakum, Tex., the top-of-the-line look-alikes go for $940.

Domestic leather prices skyrocketed when the good hides were snapped up by overseas buyers.

Technology also played a role. The frame of a Western saddle is called a saddletree. Traditional saddletrees are handmade of clear pine boards in the shape of an open gable and covered with shrink-to-fit rawhide. When covered with sheep pelt it fits over the horse’s back and serves as the foundation for the fork, seat, cantle and skirts of the finished saddle.

Assembly-Line Production

The new, cast-plastic saddletrees cost only a third as much as the rawhide trees. They are uniform in size and can be produced on an assembly line with die-cut, machine-stamped and stitched leather pieces.

Van Scoyk, 66, who co-founded his company 41 years ago while working his way through night school, is not optimistic about the future.

“It’s not in the cards for us to compete one on one with the South.

‘More for Your Money’

“The custom saddle has gone from a saddle factory to an individual doing the work at his home shop with much lower overhead. If we pay a dollar in wages, we pay another $1.60 in overhead. A guy at home can give you more for your money than a factory can.”

Colorado Saddlery saw the trend coming in time, said sales manager Jim Romero.

“It’s just today’s world,” said Romero, 46, who has been with the company 25 years. “I keep preaching quality--if you can buy quality cheaper than you can make it, buy it.”

The company’s inventory of tack supplies includes bits, spurs, halters, headstalls and hackamores from Korea, horse blankets from India and New Zealand.

“We still make blankets and chaps, feed bags, saddlebags, ferrier aprons” for the staunch made-in-America market, Romero said.

Less Than Half-Price

Picking up a pair of Korean-made stainless steel spurs, Romero said, “A tack shop can put these on the shelf for $12.95 to $24.95. If it’s made in the U.S.A, it’s going to cost $49.95 to $69.95. Which do you think most customers will reach for?”

Up on the second floor, Hayworth, the former bronc buster, works on a custom saddle in his cluttered cubicle with a small radio blaring country and Western music. Hardboard patterns hang from nails on the walls. Six to eight saddles are in various stages of creation.

Hayworth, 48, took up the craft 21 years ago after “busting a couple of legs” riding in rodeos.

His uniform is blue jeans, gray wing-tip boots, gray cowboy shirt and a sturdy canvas bib apron.

His gray-streaked hair and lined face are set on bull shoulders. His muscular arms lead to powerful, broad hands cracked and scarred from years of working leather with the round knives, skiving edgers and snob hammers.

‘Last a Hundred Years’

Speaking with a soft Montana drawl cast in his youth on ranches around the Fort Benton area, he said, “There’s no reason why one of these saddles shouldn’t last a hundred years.”

He doesn’t recommend the plastic saddletrees for working or roping.

“I’ve had to replace a few of ‘em. Seems like the plastic gets brittle after five or six years. I’ve taken ‘em apart and the plastic will just be shattered into 18 or 19 pieces.”

Hayworth noted that he could make twice as much as a plumber, carpenter or electrician. He has done that, but it’s not his cowboy heritage.

“I like building this equipment. I’ve always been around it. I’ll probably never quit till I die.”