Cash crop: Nostalgia helps sell farm themes

To hear National Geographic and a flock of demographers tell it, there are only a couple of dozen farm folks left out there in rural America, and half of them are packed to leave.

So the question of the day is: How in the name of John Deere did a couple of St. Paul entrepreneurs manage to sell nearly $2 million worth of apparel last year using the brand names Farm Boy and Farm Girl?

And that doesn't count the $900,000 worth sold by an Indiana licensee.

Dan Adamson and Brian Goldenman, both with Minnesota farm backgrounds, are the founders and proprietors of this unlikely business venture, which they've dubbed Farm Boy Co-op & Feed Co.

Their aim is to transform the farmer's image from hick to hip with a line of casual clothing that bears catch phrases. Example: "Check Your Barn Door."

That's on the fly of a pair of jeans. Others: "Manure Happens" on a T-shirt and "Knee Deep and Loving It" on a baseball cap.

My favorite is this T-shirt message: "My Cow Is Dead, So I Don't Need Your Bull."

Throw in the hobby farmers, the horse and rodeo crowd and the country-western music fans and it all adds up to a sizable market, he said.

It's a market served by a large retail category, including the likes of Mills Fleet Farm, Runnings Farm & Fleet and Tractor Supply Co., to name some of the chains with stores in Minnesota. It's this farm-and-western retailing niche that Adamson, 43, and Goldenman, 45, have courted with great success since they introduced their product line in a booth at the Minnesota State Fair in 2002.

The upshot: Today, the Farm Boy/Girl line is carried by more than 1,100 of those stores in the United States and Canada.

The business is supported by a slick catalog and website that features real farm boys and girls, sometimes shown in mildly risqué settings: kissing in a cornfield, hugging in a haymow or huddled together on a tractor. Think Abercrombie & Fitch meets "Green Acres."

The company's offices in downtown St. Paul sustain the theme: As you exit the elevator, you are met by a stuffed Delaware rooster and Rhode Island Red hen perched high on what looks like bales of hay. In fact, the entire wall in the reception area is dressed in a material that resembles hay bales.

Adamson tumbled to the notion that the potential market for a Farm Boy/Girl line was underserved while working as a graphic designer for a Minneapolis firm, a job that included assignments to help create in-store graphics and packaging for Target and Marshall Field's.

"All you could find out there were cowboy duds and work clothes," he said. So he sat down and began designing an apparel line that now ranges from jeans, shirts and shorts to hoodies, belt buckles and caps.

And he hasn't stopped there: "We're looking to offer a complete lifestyle brand," Adamson said, including future items such as footwear, bedding and fragrances, plus such promotional doodads as mud flaps, license holders and window decals.

Adamson and Goldenman, longtime friends, pulled $10,000 out of savings to start the company. Sales at that first exposure at the State Fair five years ago not only were encouraging, but also lucrative enough to kick-start the business.

"It was pretty slow that first day," said Goldenman, a veteran of 12 years in sales and customer service at Qwest Communications. "But then word got back to the barns and we got pretty busy." The payoff: Sales totaled $25,000 the first year, a sum that has grown to about $100,000 in each of the past three years at the fair.

The big jump, however, came in 2005, when they tested the wholesale market with an appearance at the Mid-States Distributing trade show run by a coalition of farm and western stores. It was their first exposure to national buyers, and it hoisted their sales to $981,000 by the end of 2006 and to $1.97 million in 2007. Included in last year's total was $70,000 in royalties paid by the Indiana licensee.

"It's been quite a ride," Goldenman said.

Presumably a hay ride.

Dick Youngblood • 612-673-4439 • yblood@startribune.com