MERIDIAN, Idaho — “When I make a custom hat, it’s custom all the way through, it fits one person,” said AJ Townley, co-owner of Whiskey Ranch Hats in Meridian.
Townley and his fiance Ashley create one-of-a-kind Western hats with shaping, branding and decorating. While Ashley burns designs into flat brim hats, AJ steams and shapes.
“After getting into it I realized that hat making is kind of a dying trade. A quality hat is something that can be passed down. It’s an heirloom. I’ve got people who bring in their grandfather’s hat, and we reblock it, remake it, and make it fit them," said Townley while working on a custom hat.
“After about a year, we kind of just jumped, and opened our first store, that was in Nampa, it was a little tiny 13x13 room. All we had were flat brims," Townley told Idaho News 6 reporter Allie Triepke.
For the past few years they have built their local business by vending at summer rodeos, community events and hosting ‘Build your own Hat’ events.
“So we have our little hat bar set up over here. This is always in the store so people can come through. We’ve got fabric scraps, playing cards, we have assortment of chains, twine, feathers, charms, all sorts of stuff so somebody wants to come in and decorate a hat they can do that they can choose from anything in the store or they can bring their own hat and we can do that as well, so it’s it’s super cool always a good time. These are some of the hats that we have for decorating if people wanna come in. These are kind of what what Ashley started with three years ago is the burnt art on the flat rims,” said Townley.
Whether it’s felt or straw, the couple is hoping these quality hats will bring more to customers than just shade from the sun.
“I was in construction before, and I had kind of the same philosophy, like if I was going to build something I was gonna build something that was gonna be here for as long as humanly possible you know ideally outlast me, and you not even even my kids."
Whiskey Ranch Hats' in store inventory can change depending on rodeos and events happening in the community, check out their social media pages for the latest updates.
