PARK CITY — There ain’t much about the Burns Cowboy Shop on Main Street that screams Old West. Not when belt buckles can go for a grand, boots for three grand and hat bands for five grand. The other day a saddle went out the door for 50 grand.
An unsuspecting customer walked in recently, looked around, and brought a belt to the counter.
The clerk rang up the purchase: $4,995.
“Wait, what?” said the customer, “I thought it was $49.95.”
He had failed to notice the comma.
“Happens all the time,” says Danna Burns with a sympathetic smile. Better than anyone, she knows the Burns Cowboy Shop was never intended to be for everyone.
“The top 1 percent love what we do,” she explains, noting, by way of example, the current eight-month waiting list for a high-end authentic Burns custom-built saddle.
“‘Largest selection, lowest price’ used to be the company slogan. That worked really well for us — until it didn’t.”
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The truth is, all appearances aside, the Burns Cowboy Shop is about as Old West as they come — the latest chapter in a family story of resilience that would make anyone who lives by the creed “cowboy up” stand up tall in the saddle and applaud.
The Burns have remained in business for 141 straight years precisely because whenever the world turns they turn with it.
They have survived recessions and the Great Depression, the invention of the automobile, two world wars, the decline of the American cowboy, computerization, Y2K and Wal-Mart. Every single time it looked like they were finished, they weren’t.
Let’s review the history:
• In 1876, Miles Burns, whose mother crossed the plains to get to Utah, opened a harness shop in the central Utah town of Loa.
• In 1898, facing a declining clientele in Loa, Miles’ son Vivian put the business on logs, moved it 50 miles north to Salina and invented saddle pack bags that were adopted by the U.S. government for use with its cavalry horses.
• In 1940, with horses becoming more and more obsolete, Viv’s son Vern invented the Pik Pocket, a collapsible storage pouch that snapped onto the springs on the back of the seat of a pickup truck.
• In 1962, after car and truck manufacturers covered the seat springs, Vern’s son Dan invented Indian blanket seat covers.
• Which brings us to Danna Burns Shaw, Dan’s daughter, who, when faced with the recession of 2007, had the idea to move the Burns brand into what she calls the “resort arena,” creating a line of designer boots, clothing, hats, bags, accessories — even exotic leather-covered cellphone cases — all of it targeting high-end customers who are willing to spend thousands so they can look like a worn-out old cowboy.
Sure, it was a gamble when Danna, her husband Scott and oldest son Braydan went the upscale route. And sure, they continued to keep their business in Salina alive, where there are still honest-to-goodness cowboys who buy their traditional, and more affordable, line of boots, saddles, bridles, buckles and harnesses.
But they couldn’t have called themselves Burnses if they hadn’t gone for it. Certainly no one was willing to face Miles, Viv, Vern or Dan when they got to the other side and tell them they hadn’t.
Ten years down the road, it appears the resort reinvention was yet another good idea. Park City has given the Burns family a nice new niche and identity, allowing them to open a second Burns Cowboy Shop in Carmel, California, which is also thriving. (They opened another high-end store in Newport Beach, but had to shut it down for lack of business. “Leather needs weather,” sighs Danna).
“We’ve always been merchants,” says Danna, who lives in Carmel and runs the shop there, leaving day-to-day management of the Park City store to Braydan, while other members of the sixth generation operate Burns Saddlery, the manufacturing and retail complex in Salina, as well as yet another Burns Cowboy Shop in Lehi.
“We represent the spirit of the West — to seek a better life,” says Danna. “We always have and hopefully always will.
“The family slogan is, ‘You’re either green and growing or ripe and rotting.’ You’ve constantly got to find your green. With each generation, everybody’s had to find their own.”