People - Sarah Calhoun

Just before a fancy meal with her parents, the entire seat of Sarah Calhoun’s pants ripped.  Back then, Calhoun wore men’s pants and problems were normal — but not usually so revealing. “I had to duct tape my pants together to get to lunch,” she says.  

Years later, after leading trail crews and guiding backpackers, Calhoun created Red Ants Pants — work pants for women.  Through her Montana-based small business in White Sulphur Springs, she gained national recognition as an entrepreneur and a champion of women in business.

“When you have a small business you have to wear all of the hats,” says Calhoun, remembering those first years. “I’d be up on a ladder painting or tearing out an old ceiling, while I was waiting to hear back from the bank.”  Other challenges included finding the right quality fabric from a company with good environmental standards, then finding a manufacturer willing to collaborate. “Convincing them to take me on as a customer [was difficult] because I was so small, had a technical product, and needed low minimums,” she says.  

Calhoun had no staff.  Even so, she had staff meetings. “I would make myself check in with myself, Monday mornings, and just say, ‘OK, where are we with this project.’ ” She was bookkeeper, marketing director, and shop keeper — plus packaging and distributing the pants. “That initial inventory by myself was a doozie,” she says.  “I had dozens of boxes backed up for months on end.”

In spite of the challenges her focus persisted. She had to try everything before she could consider whether the business was sustainable. “I was just blindly believing in it and charging forward,” she says.  

But, in the fall of ’08, just after the stock market crash, reality surfaced at a Bozeman trade show.  That same show had been great in sales the prior year.  This time it wasn’t.  “That was the first time I really got scared,” she says. 

Her customers buoyed her. “I believed in these pants,” she says, “but it wasn’t until I was at the shows where there were women jumping for joy or bowing down at my feet… it made me realize that we had something worthwhile.”

Now, after six years in business, customers are still Calhoun’s core drive, but she also recognizes the value of the business beyond providing great pants. “Providing jobs is important,” she says. 

Calhoun’s role has also changed. “I rarely get to fit a customer in pants and all the distribution is done by our excellent staff.” But there’s no lazing around in pajamas.  When she isn’t planning a successful music festival, she is increasingly away from home on business or answering weeks’ worth of emails.

Marketing nurtures her creativity.  Booze helps. “When I stay in the office late and have a drink or two, that’s when I can get in that zone a lot easier.” And a group of friends are a great tool for generating ideas. “Once you get a couple of creative minds together who understand Red Ants Pants and what we’re doing, that’s fun to see where we can go,” she says.  

Calhoun is pretty and feminine.  And when she’s in her office, wearing a sundress on a 90 degree-day, it’s baffling that she designed such tough pants out of necessity.  She is always dressed functionally, but the increasing effort to keep her work and personal life balanced spills over into her wardrobe. “In some ways, the more chainsaws and rifles I buy and use, the more pedicures [I’d like] and sequins I want to be wearing.”  

Sequined Red Ants Pants will never exist — they aren’t practical — but the original work pant will persist because women value them. Calhoun says, “When it literally moves customers to tears over a damn pair of pants — we must be doing something right.”

~ Sarah Kmon grew up in England.  Now, she lives with her husband on their remote ranch in the Big Belt Mountains, MT.  When she isn’t writing (and editing the English spellings), she is running, riding horses, or playing bovine midwife.