Business & Finance: Moppets’ Stampede

As a hard-riding, straight-shooting cowboy, William (“Hopalong Cassidy”) Boyd has been the star of dozens of B movies. Last week, as Cowboy Boyd strode into New Orleans’ D. H. Holmes department store, the fanfare would have done justice to a Technicolored A production. He was there to plug his Hopalong Cassidy boots, spurs, shirts, toy guns and some 37 other cowboy items for moppets, and 50,000 fans and customers were on hand to say howdy.

As boss of Hopalong Cassidy Enterprises, which gets an average 5% royalty on all sales of Hopalong cowboy goods, Boyd is the latest rider in a rich new stampede. While other retail sales have slumped, cowboy clothes and gadgets have gone galloping ahead. In the first 45 days they were on the market, $1,000,000 in Hopalong Cassidy items were sold.

Thanks to Television. With help from Boyd, and such other horse-opera stars as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, one retailer estimated the trade would sell upwards of 40 million pieces of Western gear this year. About half of all boys’ furnishings will have a Western touch. Though the boom has been building for several years, one big reason for the sudden upsurge is television. Unable to get current movies, TV stations have resurrected hundreds of old-fashioned Westerns.

Retailers have also plugged cowboy stuff to the hilt. As one said: “Cowboy things used to be considered just toys. But we’ve been smart enough to take them out of the toy class and make many of the items necessities for many kids. Now they wear blue jeans and Levi’s to school, even in New York.” Brooklyn’s Abraham & Straus has set up a special cowboy section; Philadelphia’s Lit Brothers has a “Western Trading Post.” And retailers have egged on manufacturers to add new “cowboy” items. The latest item on the list: a Roy Rogers drinking glass.

Plastic Sidelines. Dozens of old-line companies are riding the new range, and many a small company has fattened up on it. Jersey City’s Esquire Novelty Co. last year put out 1,500,000 holsters at $1 to $10 apiece. Pennsylvania’s Hubley Manufacturing Co., biggest maker of repeating cap pistols, last year turned out about 5,000,000.

Typical of the mushrooming new industry is Tennessee’s Boot-ster Manufacturing Co. It puts out a plastic spatlike gadget that fits over a boy’s shoe, thus “makes any shoe a cowboy boot.” J. Z. Miller, part owner of two small department stores, got the idea for his Boot-ster when he overheard parents complaining of the high cost ($5 and up), high heels and narrow toes of boys’ cowboy boots.

He teamed up with Lloyd Easterling, an office supplies dealer, and they began making Boot-sters as a sideline. Soon it became their main line. From $75,000 in the first nine months, sales streaked to $250,000 last year. Now Boot-ster has added plastic cowboy cuffs, lariats and spurs, expects to gross $1,000,000 this year.

Lounging in Luxury. Like real cowboys, who take to such luxuries as $125 hand-embroidered gabardine shirts, moppets can also indulge in embroidered shirts for $15, embossed holsters at $15, fringed and decorated leather chaps at $12, and even cowboy pajamas for $2.98. To have a well-dressed cowboy in the home, parents can plunk out as much as $83.40 for a single outfit. For another $42.50, they can buy a gabardine shirt, trousers and felt hat for a cowgirl. Even at those prices, retailers have found little buyers’ resistance as yet.

How long will the boom last? Said the trade publication, the Boys’ Outfitter: “Parents, sooner or later, are going to resist the Western trend…Johnny and Billy forever in…blue jeans, wearing sombreros in the home, and raising the roof with yipee and hi-ho while popping up and down behind chairs and sofas shooting off cap guns. [But at present] no end…is in sight.”