Lisa Bollin with her husband, Kirk

Just outside Litchfield, Minn., an hour or so west of Minneapolis, out where cornfields dominate the landscape, there stands a little factory where a mini-revolution in Western wear is taking place.

“At the Denver Merchandise Mart, we just signed a contract to enlarge our showroom from 250 square feet to 2,000 square feet,” Bollin, 42, says. “At the last National Finals Rodeo, one of the top 15 girls in the barrel racing was wearing Cowgirl Tuff. We’ll be there this year—we have a 10-by-40 foot space at the Sands and a 20-by-20 foot space at Mandalay Bay. We’re working with Lammle’s [store chain] up at the Calgary Stampede. They have 24 stores, and one of our largest buyers has taken Cowgirl Tuff to a new level in Canada—their first order was $50,000.”

To keep up with demand, Cowgirl Tuff has had to keep merchandise temporarily stored in the kind of containers that one sees stacked on barges or flatcars. There’s not enough warehouse space for them at the farm.

At yet, for all of the success, Bollin admits with a laugh that she still lives in a double-wide.

At various times, she and husband Kirk have felt they were on the brink of business collapse. Those were the times when they “sold the horse trailer” to stay afloat. The horse trailer has been sold three times.

But “persistence pays off,” as Bollin often says.

	The horsewoman—represented here by models in Cowgirl Tuff fashions—has been influential in shaping Bollin’s style.

She muses on the fast-arriving signs of success. “It’s really different, seeing something like Kristy Lee Cook wearing your clothing on TV, on American Idol. It was a pinch-me moment. Or seeing them on Good Morning America, or on The Ellen Show, or on Jay Leno.” She adds, “We have a country duo, an up-and-coming act called Bombshel, that is wearing them, too.”

Her jeans line arrived just this year. “If I were to give anything credit for the biggest boost in sales, it would be the jeans line,” Bollin says. “They’ve been incredible. Stores are ordering some of our new pieces without even seeing them. We’re coming into more outerwear, and we have belts, T-shirts, tanks, the whole sportswear line.”

Recent additions in staffing have meant that Bollin “can [continue to] be creative and keep designing and working on new stuff all the time.”

“I went to school for fashion merchandising and design, and then I worked in the retail industry for probably ten years,” she says. “So I know what it is like to sell and that is why I try to get my stuff to work together, so you can get multiple sales. It also helps that I barrel race and rodeo so I know the lifestyle and know what they are wearing.”

Her main barrel horse is a 19-year-old named Birds Bonanza, a hard-running athlete that she picked up for $4,800, having sold five horses (but not the horse trailer) to get him. He can be ornery, and Bollin, who has had experience with ornery horses, says it was Bird that inspired her slogan for Cowgirl Tuff: “Even though you’ve been bucked, kicked, bit, and stomped, never give up.”

This year he’s carried her to a couple of wins and “we’re doing really good.” “He’s tough,” she says of the notyouthful Bird. “He runs on hard ground. The tougher the ground is, the tougher he runs. He doesn’t stumble, doesn’t miss a beat.”

She found him at a Western Saddle Club event. A horse that had been on the racetrack, he was reduced to competing in gymkhanas. “But he can fly like a bird,” says Bollin, who figured him to be a barrel horse with 1D (speed rating) potential— in other words, top flight. “He’d never run a rodeo, jackpot, barrels, or anything before I got him,” she says.

Bollin, who holds a PRCA card, says she is trying to run more pro rodeos on her circuit, the Great Lakes. She has been riding since she was two.

The family business—it rests on land that Bollin’s dad once farmed—now employs a dozen, including National Sales Manager Jackie Dalchow, a key figure.

Bollin’s friend Laura Berg, a deputy sheriff whom Bollin got to know as a fellow competitor on the barrel racing circuit, says that Bollin “has been a competitive person the entire time I have known her, but at the same time she is a very helpful person outside the arena. If someone needs help with their horse, or whatnot, she pitches in. And you don’t find that very often with very competitive people. She’s fun, too. Easy going. Easy to talk to, hang out with, spend time with.”

Berg calls Bollin “very artistic,” adding that “for years, when she had her business called ‘Designs by Lisa,’ she would paint pictures on women’s clothing by hand. She can draw very well, too.”

Todd Barden, newly hired director of marketing and communications for the National Reining Horse Association, has spent 20 years in the Western wholesale industry. He says he remembers Bollin from as far back as her first appearance at the Dallas Apparel Market, when she displayed her wares at a little 10-by-10 booth. “I’ve watched her business grow every year,” Barden says. “She has done so well and I am proud of her. She reminds me of the good, average American horsewoman. She is good people and everything she designs has that strong, everyday woman in mind. For her, it’s all hard work and perseverance. What she is doing proves that anyone can take an idea and a philosophy and with some hard work be successful.”

Kirk and Lisa will be building the new house this fall, but they won’t soon forget the days of the double-wide or selling off the horse trailer. “You have to get back on and keep trying and never give up,” Lisa says. It’s her mantra for the business and her message to her customers. “You can live in a trailer and still accomplish your dreams. It’s just a place where you lay your head. Never give up your dream.”