“Sarah, you’re onto something big here. I think you need to move on this now.” He had worked in production and design for Patagonia for the past 20 years. Calhoun grew up on a Connecticut farm, and after she graduated from Gettysburg College with a degree in Environmental Studies, she became an outdoor educator for Outward Bound and Youth Corps. From bailing hay on the farm to maintaining ski trails, Calhoun found that every pair of pants ripped, required patching, or didn’t even fit to begin with. There were workwear pants, but they were made for men. And so began the start of Red Ants Pants. Ivan Doig’s 1978 novel, This House of Sky, brought Calhoun to Montana. There was a dream of Montana: the rugged, wild landscape; the grit and determination of its people. She left Connecticut and came to Montana, having never visited the state. “…the expanse of it all: across a dozen miles and for almost forty along its bowed length, this home valley of the Smith River country lay open and still as a gray inland sea, held by buttes and long ridges at its northern and southern ends, and the east and west by mountain ranges.” —This House of Sky Calhoun started out in Bozeman, but something was missing. To her, it didn’t feel like the Montana she read about in Doig’s memoirs, so she set out to the exact location he wrote about: White Sulphur Springs. Boasting a population of 925 residents (2017 Census) and about one square mile of land— 100 miles away from larger cities— White Sulphur Springs isn’t necessarily the easiest place to start a business, especially if you’re going in with no experience. But Calhoun dove right in: she bought an old saddle shop
48
m o nt a n a w o ma n ma g a zi ne | is s ue 29 9
on Main Street and got to work. She renovated the storefront, lived in the back of the building, and rented out the upper units. She inserted herself wherever she could in White Sulphur Springs: coaching the volleyball team, volunteering as an EMT, joining the arts council, helping at cattle drives— wherever she could help, she did. Calhoun became an integral part of White Sulphur Springs. As Calhoun found her place in Montana, she also learned the ropes of business along the way. She got a job sewing backpacks to learn about production from the floor, she worked with the women who made the pants on design, source, and textile, and she found local women to make belts and aprons. Every Red Ants Pants product— pants and shorts, shirts and vests, towels and carpenter pencils— is made in America. Shirts are screen printed in Bozeman, pants are sewn in Washington, and leather belts are stamped in White Sulphur Springs. Despite the steep learning curve, Calhoun built a company from the ground up without a background in business. “It’s been helpful that I didn’t have a business background and [that] I’ve never taken a business course in my life,” she observes. “I’m really able to think and operate outside of the box because I don’t even know what the box is.” 2011 witnessed the creation of the Red Ants Pants Foundation, a non-profit organization that’s dedicated to the women of rural Montana. The Foundation has three main outreaches: the Girls Leadership Program, Timber Skills Workshops, and Community Grants. These three branches work to support small-town Montana: mentoring young women in the fundamentals of leadership, teaching women the basics of carpentry, and supporting Montana organizations and individuals. The Foundation has now given $110,000 in community grants. With her dreams wild and boundless as the prairies of the Smith River Valley, Calhoun looked ahead. Women needed practical workwear, and she made that happen. She wanted to support rural Montana and preserve traditional skills, and she made that happen, too. The Foundation needed more support, so the next obvious step was to create the Red Ants Pants Music Festival. Once a year, out in the dusty fields of White Sulphur
RED ANTS PANTS IN ACTION. ©ERIK PETERSEN
S
arah Calhoun sat with a copy of Small Business for Dummies at the Leaf & Bean in Bozeman in 2005. She knew that there was a need for women’s workwear. And not just workwear that a woman could wear— workwear for women. A man noticed Calhoun’s book of choice and asked her what business she would be starting. A week later, he took her by his shop and shared his contacts and advice for starting a clothing company.
