Dirty Scotty’s Hats of Ill Repute opens

By: 
Victoria O’Brien

Scotty Flitner did not set out to be a milliner. She’s a bonafide cowgirl and sixth generation rancher, who studied art, then equine dentistry, and cowboyed the Idaho-Nevada border before returning to her home state of Wyoming. She’s also insatiably curious, loves learning and is always ready to meet a new challenge with a pragmatic, can-do, never-quit attitude. Following several years of independent study, apprentice work and a four-month intensive in Billings with Randy Rains of Law Dog Hat Company, Flitner’s own hat shop, Dirty Scotty’s Hats of Ill Repute, opened in downtown Greybull recently, taking over the Mackey’s Custom Hats business.
“It just kind of happened,” recalls Flitner. “Mackey passed away and I kind of just happened upon it, and then [the business] was offered to me.”
Immediately after moving into the shop, she got to work, crafting custom beaver-felt cowboy hats and repairing pieces cowboys thought were lost causes.
“It’s been super busy,” she says. “I do the cowboy deal, so everywhere I go, people are handing me hats and then coming here. It’s been a nice way to get started. I get the opportunity to enjoy learning and still doing right now. I know a lot of people do sign themselves up for more they can handle and I don’t want to be that, so I’m very honest with people.”
Nevertheless, starting a new venture is not without its hiccups and Flitner jokes that she should have gone to school to study business, given the daunting administrative tasks — taxes, insurance, wholesale ordering and supplies — that go hand-in-hand with the creative joy she’s found in hat-making.
“It’s a lot,” she concedes. “My landlord has been very supportive of me as a young business owner, which I’m grateful for.”
The primary challenge facing her is in the supply-chain: she’s backordered through February for beaver felt. While more established milliners have been able to build up store rooms full of the necessary supplies, Flitner is new and without existing inventory, and so must start from scratch.
“I didn’t think this would be the part where I’d struggle.” She explains that what ties her to her supplier is their production of the larger, six-inch brims that most appeal to Wyoming’s cowboys. “They’re the only ones who do it. And once a guy’s set on having that five, five-and-a-half inch brim, there’s no talking him out of it.
“[The other problem] is figuring out how much of this I’m going to use, how much of that I’m going to use [and trying to anticipate demand]. And holy cow, that is hard.”
Flitner is unfazed and knows her supply-chain woes will eventually even out. She’s instead focusing on what she can control right now and in the near future, but also thinking ahead and planning for the longterm. She’s in it for the long haul: hat-making, she explains, is like a retirement plan.
“I think all cowboys should have a job they can do sitting down,” she says. “Just in case the worst happens.”
She’s considerate of scale, having seen how rapid growth can lead to stumbles and falls that end in disaster, and measured in her approach to business. Ideally, she says, her business acumen will be able to develop alongside each other.
“Eventually, I want it to grow. I’d like five years or so to really get my feet under me and understand the ordering [and administrative process] better. And in 10 or 15 years, I’d really like to be a master hatter.”
From there, Flitner wants to develop her own apprenticeship program and pay forward the generosity and mentorship shown to her by Rains.
“I loved that program, loved it,” she says of her time at Law Dog. “Randy’s the most phenomenal human being and he’s been making hats for 43 years. He’s so passionate about it.”
Before her apprenticeship with Rains, Flitner had hoped to apprentice with two other hat-makers only for both to fall through.
“It was devastating,” she remembers. “[Millinery] is very hard. You can’t just find a book about making a beaver felt cowboy hat, you know? You have to pay a ton of money before they’ll tell you one thing about it. It’s such a tight-knit industry. And that was really intimidating and scary to me. I had never had that before.”
And so Flitner hopes that someday she will be able to open the same door Rains did for her for aspiring milliners and fledgling craftspeople.
“I’d like to be able to have a stable apprenticeship,” she says. “This is one thing I’ll say: agriculture has kept dying arts alive. There’s an ag industry program called ‘Be a Maker’ and they bring silversmiths, boot makers, cinch makers, rawhide braiders together to do workshops and apprenticeships for two weeks or more. There’s another with Art of the Cowgirl that does something similar in Arizona.
“I want to be involved in things like that. I never want someone to feel like I did [when I was starting out]. If I wanted to train a dragon, I think I could have figured it out a little better than making a hat [on my own]. I was so frustrated.”
For now, Flitner is continuing to learn her trade and showing up to work each day. She’s also still working on the family’s ranch in Shell this summer and sketching out plans to further develop her storefront later this year when ranch activity winds down. She’s applied for a Wyoming Small Business Council grant that will go toward her store’s sign, plans to build out the showroom area and display her hats and artwork, and her mother, Pam, will sell antiques in the two unoccupied rooms in the back. It’s been a hard balance, she admits, but she knows it’s worth it.
“It’s going to be a fight for a minute, but it’s going to be good.” She grins. “I just keep telling people, wait until the fall! That’s when everything is going to happen.”
Dirty Scotty’s Hats of Ill Repute is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 5pm and is located at 535 Greybull Ave.