Original subtitles

This is a symbol of the great iconic American cowboy, which symbolizes hard

work, and your handshake means more than your signature.

If I'm moving bulls, horseback, and stuff, I've always got it on. It's kind

like your uniform.

We want to give you the best quality product.

We want to give you the best customer service possible.

We want to deliver on time, and we want to do all of those things at a fair

price.

If you're a cowboy, you wear a cowboy hat.

It's American Hat Company. It's 110 years old. We make one thing, and that's

cowboy hats.

We don't make T -shirts. We don't make ball caps. We don't make anything else.

We're in the business of making cowboy hats. We're not playing baseball. We're

doing cowboy stuff, so that's what we do here.

Bowie, Texas is a small town in between Decatur and Wichita Falls.

5 ,200 people.

People ask me, well, where's Bowie, Texas? And I tell them it's 14 miles

the spot where Jesus lost his sandals.

You just got to go a little bit farther.

I love the people in this town.

My youngest daughter is a police officer here. I'm proud to be able to help

raise my granddaughters here and be a member of this community.

Good morning. How are you today?

Good, good. Hanging in there.

Everybody's doing good. Looks like everybody's happy working.

Getting it done.

We do not import any finished goods at all.

Everything we bring in, we bring in in raw material.

Then we make it right here in Bowie, Texas.

And it's handmade here in Bowie, Texas.

This is where it all begins. So these are raw straw bodies. These are all hand

-woven. So it's really kind of a work of art.

But you can see in this form, it's very pliable.

And so we have to get it from this form to this form. So where it's going to

actually cover your head and protect you from the elements.

I happen to be the beneficiary of some folks that took some chances on American

Hat Company. And those folks would be Keith and Susan Maddox. Keith, our late

owner, and Susan, our current owner.

So that's a raw felt body, but it is made to our specifications.

Keith went to Portugal and blended furs, belly, beaver, and mink, probably the

finest hat you can buy.

So Keith Maddox, he was a rodeo cowboy.

Grew up on a ranch in Weezer, Idaho.

His dad, Dwight Maddox, was probably one of the toughest guys you'd ever meet.

Still rode bulls at the age of 58.

You know, I grew up in a Western family. My dad rodeoed professionally.

I grew up on a ranch.

I've been wearing hats and boots, so I can remember.

Keith had a good rodeo career, but knew that he wanted to go into business. He

wanted to have his own hat company.

He always felt like a good pair of boots and a good hat. Every cowboy needed

that.

This is a collection of old hat blocks, just as a way of remembering our

heritage and our history.

Some of these can be stacked to make a top hat, but now we use a tapered crown.

So instead of it going straight up on the side, they're tapered to look more

like that.

In 2004, Keith and Susan Maddox were able to put the money together and write

check for the American Hat Company. They moved it here to Bowie, Texas, with the

help of the Economic Development Department here in town.

And it was all about quality, quality, quality. That was his thing.

So we start here with a way out. That's what this is called.

So these tickets tell these guys how to press the hat.

The key that they've got to do is they've got to make sure that...

When they put it on there, that that vent stays straight.

Each one of these guys will press between 250 and 300 hats a day.

This is the area where they cut the brim down and sew the wire on. And then as

the hat is getting ready to come through the factory, they lay the sweatband

inside it. So it's been pre -made waiting for that hat to show up.

Tammy is sewing in reading, so she's got a big old roll of it.

when that seats inside your hat.

So it gives it a nice head.

And then they sew the sweatband together.

And then this has got to fit inside the hat.

If you cut that or trim that a little bit, it's going to throw everything off.

So then what we're doing here, Michelle is tacking the sweatband onto the hat.

And then once they're through all that, there's one other step.

This is called hot blocking.

She puts them on these hot blocks, and the hot blocks then smooth out the

sweatband to make sure there's no wrinkles or anything in the sweatband.

got these, so she can also put that inside the hat and make sure she's

the right size of the right hat. Then they come over here to the inspection

department. They do a final inspection, make sure that everything is what it's

supposed to be. So that's the straw side of the business. This is probably the

most recognizable piece of apparel on the planet Earth.

People calling me a goat never, that was not ever a goal of mine.

That never really factored into my bull riding. I always told them, go buckles

or not.

When I hung that bull rope up, I wanted everybody to look and say, man, he never

had any backup in him. He went at them every single time, and I feel like

what I did in my career.

J .B. Mooney is the guy, when you look up a cowboy in the dictionary, he's got

his picture there.

Arguably one of the greatest bull riders of all time, one of the toughest human

beings that you'll ever want to meet.

He broke his neck, and he knew he broke his neck.

and sat out on a picnic table and said, hey, can somebody

get me a cigarette?

I mean, smoke a cigarette and then tell them the guys at the ambulance probably

won't stabilize this because I think I've broken my neck.

Your friends and your family are the only person that's going to remember

gold buckle hanging around your waist as soon as they hand that gold buckle to

you. You've got to hit the reset like you never want it. Go again.

Now, we've got a lot of great bull riders, but J .D. Mooney is on a whole

plane, and you can just see the execution in his movement. He knows

position he needs to get to, and he knows the exact intensity to use to move

there. He knows how to find the rhythm of the bull.

When I was 18, a bull stung me on the stomach, lacerated my liver.

Broke all my ribs on the right side.

I was a little bit young and dumb, so I didn't go to the hospital until the next

day. I thought I was all right. And when I finally went, they told me it should

have ruptured, and I bled out and never made it out of the arena.

And I realized pretty quick, if I was going to do it, I better mean it.

When I lacerated my liver at that job I was working at, they asked me, what are

you going to do now?

I said, well, I'm back riding bulls as soon as I can.

Oh, you're going to go back? Bulldog killed you. I said, yeah.

I wanted to ride bulls my whole life, but it didn't really, it's the side

everybody knows. You just kind of put it in the back of your head and out of

sight, out of mind kind of deal. Say hello to your 2015 PBR World Champion.

J .B. Mooney and Keith Maddox, the one thing that they had in common, no quit.

Zero quit.

Before I was 18, we got on bulls seven days a week and twice on Sunday.

And then once I got in the PBR and started going, nothing ever changed. I

changed from day one.

You know, when I broke my neck, that's what I told all the guys on the team. I

said, look, I'm a proven fact.

It doesn't matter how good you are or how good you're riding. One day it's

and the next day it's gone. So you better mean it every time you nod your

He's been wearing our hat for quite a few years now, and we've never really

a contract. It's just been, hey, you know, give your hat.

It was like a sponsorship deal without a contract. It was just a handshake, so

I'd always tag him, and I always had American hats on, so it worked out.

How'd you come up with the shape?

It was just what I always wore. It used to be real bad. I would never let anyone

shake my hat. No one.

Now people call it, and that's for the JV shape.

My name's James Andre, Capital Hatters here in Stephenville, Texas, and we

started back in 2004, so 21 years right now.

We're focused on our retailers that sell hats and do hats right, what we

consider right, and that means to handshape cowboy hats in front of the

customer. Yeah, we get hats all the time, you know, for the JV shade, so

very popular shade. He's made his mark in the hat business.

A wider, squared -off brim, a lot like the one that I'm wearing, all -around

type crown.

All -around is what I've got on. This hat right here is basically a Cattleman

crown with some cutter bumps in it.

Now we're walking up on Julie Dawson. Julie Dawson's been here about 12 years,

and Julie has shaped over...

250 ,000 hats.

So you see it's a lot of symmetrical hand movements.

And she's measuring things with her hands, and you can see that they're all

safe, very close to the same.

And now your word's known if you've got a smile on your face.

It really matters how sharp your corners are, you know, smoothness of your

lines, the symmetry.

The way I see it, if I wouldn't wear the hat, then I'm not going to send it out.

I want it to look fantastic to me.

When I was riding, they had to keep me stocked up because my dismounts weren't

so good, so I went through quite a few straw hats during the summertime.

In 2005, we had a grass fire come to Bowie, Texas, and we lost $13 .5 million

raw hat bodies.

Honestly, a lesser man would have probably said, okay, well, this is not

cards.

You know, I quit.

But not Keith, and I wasn't there at the time, but I envisioned him just tilting

his hat back on his head a little bit and pushing all of his chips to the

of the table and said, you know what, I'm going to bet it all, and I bet it

on American Hat Company.

He mortgaged his house that was paid for, went into his 401K, and basically

raised the money to go buy more raw material, plus keep the employees

He didn't lay anybody off. He didn't let anybody go.

He paid everybody their wages while he was waiting to get raw material and

rebuild.

You know, Samantha and Jagger were standing beside me in that hospital bed.

And he said, he says, not 100%, but it's about 98%. You land on your head again,

it'll snap your neck either above or below where we fixed.

I said, well, I'm listening.

He said, below, you're in a wheelchair the rest of your life. Above, you're

dead. And I said, well, the last 20 years of my life, I used my head as the

landing gear.

There's 100 % chance I'm going to land on my head.

And I knew right then when he said it, it was over. I didn't say anything to

anybody for a couple weeks, but I knew then, right?

Well, it's done.

And, you know, it's just part of it.

Keith and Susan Maddox, they fought their way back. You know, it wasn't

There were some lean times. There were some difficult times. I think there was

one point where Susan said, should we just quit and go do something else? And

says, quit? There's no option to quit here.

You know, we lose our house. We lose our retirement.

He had no...

Plan B. It was always Plan A. He was dedicated to make Plan A work.

He would often say, if you never quit, they can't beat you.

You know, everybody always asked me when I was riding, what's Plan B? Make Plan

A work.

Ride bulls.

There was no Plan C.

When I started building the arena here.

That was strictly for my own use, you know. That way, if I wanted to get on

practice bulls, I didn't have to go anywhere.

I could run them right down there. We'd buck bulls all day whenever we wanted

to. And after brushing my neck, it just kind of led into, well, let's do bull

rides here. We've got it, so let's do it. And that's where Randy came in.

How's it going, guys? Randy Cortieri here. We're here at Bucktown. This is J

Mooney's compound for bull riders, by bull riders. And today we've got an ABVI

Classic.

The riders have a chance to win some money, but the bulls are the ones that

competing for the year -end championship.

Keith's cattle brand was a plus and an X.

And the plus stood for the word positive, and the X represented times.

was an avid believer in being in control of your thoughts, the power of positive

thinking.

He left that for us.

That's our guiding light here at American Hat Company.

We have not monetized it because what we didn't want to do was dilute his brand

in any way, shape, fashion, or form, and his memory is not for sale.

These are all requests for hat patches.

That's just something we give away here every day.

So that's today's, that's the request for today.

These two go in the envelope.

And on the inside of the hat, we also stamp.

The positive times.

It's pretty cool to see these guys come in here with these bulls and showcase

their ability.

You know, from the time I was 13 years old, I rode bulls. And now, his son

Jagger is coming on strong.

I wake up every day wishing I could get on one more.

Some days I think it's a good idea, maybe just one more. I get on one more

then Jagger will run by and I'm like, no, that's a bad idea.

Okay, so this is where the magic happens.

So this is called a finger blocker. So what this machine does is we'll have a

raw body.

And so this is how they'll start off before we start.

the process of making it into a final finished felt hat.

What really makes a great hat at the end of the day is the feel of the hat.

The feel of the hat, the thickness of the brim, how it will hold its shape.

I love to say when you buy a 1000X hat that it should come with a box of band

-aids because you'll look so sharp.

And what it's doing is making the hat pliable.

And each one of these fingers has to pull evenly.

So we'll lock it down, then we're going to re -steam it.

I'll then choose the crown.

It's going to give you your crown height and your brim size all in one machine.

So this is before, and this is after it's come off the machine.

So the next step is going to be what we call plating.

This here is called your plating machine.

And so every time he lifts up, it's releasing the moisture out of the hat.

So the more moisture you get out of the hat, the tighter the bond and the

fibers. So this lets us know how tight that hat is. So if it needs a little bit

longer to bake, we can bake it in the place for a little bit longer.

I mean, we're still finishing them by hand with an orbital sander, and they're

not done. We don't have a recipe.

So we have six different sandpaper grits that we use.

They're not done until they feel good.

It'll be nice and smooth, and it'll feel like silk.

There's been plenty of times I get on six, seven, ride all six or seven, and

just felt like something wasn't right.

And before lights or anything at the arenas I was getting on, we pulled

around, turned the headlights on, and kept loading them all night until I felt

like I rode them like I was supposed to.

Everyone always asks me, what bull riding school did you go to?

Trial and error.

What's that mean?

It didn't work. I tried not to do it again.

Trying to give younger guys a better opportunity than I had.

I was taught when I had a young age, you play the game, you take the thing.

And I did every day of my life.

Even now when I get up, I hurt all over. But that's part of it. I was willing to

do it to be able to.

To be good at what I love doing.

It's kind of unpredictable what a wild animal is going to do.

You know,

every hat's going to tell a story.

And we want to be a part of that story.

And so we want to make the best hat there is. So that hat can be passed down

from generation to generation.

We're trying to make a statement for younger people that this

cowboy hat stands for something. The symbolism of that great iconic American

cowboy.

It's history.

It's symbolism. It's tradition.

If you're a cowboy, you wear a cowboy hat.

Your hat is there to protect you on the worst days when the rain wants to run

down the back of your jacket or the sun's beating on your neck.

But then your hat's with you on the best days, the day you walk your daughter

down the aisle and meet your grandkid for the first time.

But then, when your journey on the earth is over, your hat will hang on the wall

silently in remembrance of you.