Made in Colorado (Fall 2023) — Bison Leather Goods, biodegradable hemp clothing and more

All Made In Colorado‘s winners and finalists have at least one thing in common: They all make products in Colorado. 

It underlines the sheer breadth of the products made in Colorado. While the Colorado manufacturing base is not as established as places like the Rust Belt and the Southeast, it is also unconstrained by tradition and underpinned by innovation.  

And that might be exactly what the domestic industry needs as it rides a winning streak fueled by the return of manufacturing from China and other overseas locales — no matter whether it lands in Detroit or Steamboat Springs, Colorado. 

Coleman’s Haberdashery — Bison Leather Goods 

Steamboat Springs, CO

Website: www.colemanshaberdashery.com

Vince Coleman took up leatherwork as a hobby after working in the restaurant industry, then went pro with Coleman’s Haberdashery in 2016. “I was burned out and ready for a career change after doing it for 21 years,” Coleman says. “I stumbled across bison hides. The reason I chose those was because of the durability initially: They have 40 percent greater tensile strength than traditional cowhide.” 

Sourcing the hides largely from bison ranches on the Western Slope, Coleman and his wife, Gretchen, hand-stitch wallets, tote bags, belts and other products, and back them with a lifetime guarantee. 

The shop also makes a variety of products for ski resorts, distilleries and guest ranches. “When COVID hit, we transitioned, business model-wise, more into the wholesale and private-label side of things,” Coleman says. After the summer season, the operation takes on custom projects ranging from notebooks to chaps. 

COST: Starts at $29 retail.

Deerhammer Distillery Trail Forge 

Buena Vista, CO

Website: www.deerhammer.com

A graphic designer turned distiller, Lenny Eckstein changed careers when he launched Deerhammer Distillery in Buena Vista in 2012. As craft distilling took off in Colorado, Eckstein saw an opportunity. “It blew my mind with what could happen with whiskey on a small scale,” he says. The career move opened up “an outlet for creativity I couldn’t get sitting in front of a computer all the time.” 

Production has grown from about a barrel a month to almost a barrel a day. Deerhammer has focused on single-malt whiskey since day one, but Eckstein says he likes the opportunity to experiment.  

Case in point: In 2018, Deerhammer partnered with Eddyline Brewing in Buena Vista to distill 10,000 gallons of the brewery’s surplus Crank Yanker IPA into Trail Forge. The third release came out in spring 2023, and Eckstein has six more barrels aging for future releases. Proceeds go to a good cause: To date, it’s raised about $30,000 for trails in the Buena Vista area. 

COST: $85 retail 

h clothing co 

Colorado Springs, CO

Website: www.hclothingco.com

While working on his MBA, Alex Jackson learned some “dark truths” of the textile industry’s sustainability, or lack thereof. In response, he started h clothing co to make durable, biodegradable hemp clothing. 

A self-taught sewist who works as a business analyst by day, Jackson makes every shirt, dress, pants and shorts by hand himself. “YouTube is a hell of a resource if you know what you’re looking for,” he laughs. “I’d purchased a sewing machine some years earlier to start doing some leatherwork. “I sewed my first shirt in 2020 in early COVID, and everything just kind of blew up from there.” 

The h clothing lifetime guarantee is basically ironclad: Jackson will repair and restitch any garment he sells. “I want the clothing I make to be out there as long as possible. I always see these as lifelong items.” 

COST: $80 to $250 retail.

Trash Panda Disc Golf 

Denver, CO

Website: www.trashpandadiscgolf.com 

Jesse Stedman started playing disc golf in 2008 when he was a freshman in high school. “I thought to myself, ‘This is an outdoor sport that depends on plastic production, so where’s the recycled plastic?’” he remembers. “There was really none.” 

A dozen years and many rounds of disc golf later, a layoff at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic led Stedman to pursue the idea with Trash Panda. For the first two years, Stedman made the discs, each of them stamped with a “Recycled in Colorado” tag, himself. “I built an injection-molding machine in my garage,” he says. “That’s how I did it for two years.” 

In 2022, he turned to a Denver-area contract manufacturer to boost production with industrial-scale injection-molding machines and meet demand. “I made 5,000 products by hand before we scaled, and those were literally one at a time on that injection machine,” Stedman says. 

COST: Discs $17 to $22 retail. 

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected]