The epitome of a hipster, poseur modern business. Gorgeous to visit, the shop could be a haberdashery in a Tarantino western. But is there any substance behind the surface? My experience says "no".
I took an old family woolen felt cowboy hat for stretching, cleaning, and a hatband. Peon work, I know, but they were in town and I like to keep my business local. Many weeks go by, no hat, I call to check progress and they say it's almost done. Another week passes and I go by to pick it up. It's just as stained and dirty as when I brought it in, but with a nick in the brim that I don't remember it having when I dropped it off. It does have a hatband in it however and it does seem to be somewhat stretched.
The look on my face evidently betrayed my discontent when they told me the cost would be $75, so they knocked it down to $60. With the condition it was still in, I paid and left, even though I was just going to throw it away.
3 months pass and my son and I take a trip to Tombstone, where I wear the hat for the first time. In Sierra Vista we spot a large tack shop, rodeo outfitter, western wear shop, very wrangler-working man's sort of place. We walk in to look around and a middle-aged, ex-barrel racer is steaming hats into custom shapes. This gal knows what she is doing, so I ask her to take a look at my hat and she INSTANTLY tells me to stand waay back from her. This is the era before COVID, I wondered what had I done to earn her ostracism? She said she could see my hat had MITES and could infect her other hats and SHE WOULD NOT WORK ON IT. She pointed out the tiny holes caused by the mites and told me to stick it in my freezer for two weeks, then she could clean it and trim the brim easy as pie. I told her another hat shop had just worked on it and supposedly cleaned it. She said, "Shee-it hon, they didn't even try to clean it and if they didn't spot the mite holes, they have no idea what they were doing."
Then she handed me a can of Scout light felt hat spray cleaner for $10, told me how to use it and promised me most of the stains that Tatton Baird had supposedly cleaned would come out.
Two weeks of hat freezing later, I used the Scout cleaner and you guessed it.... 90% of the stains came out on the first application. Another 5-7% came out with further applications. Tatton Baird clearly did not even try to clean my hat when such a service required only squirting pennies worth of fluid from a spray can and brushing it off later. So I guess I bought a hatband and got an untraceable nick for my $60.
But hey, at least my hat probably gave them mites. read more