WORTHINGTON, Minn. -- One of the trademark livestock enterprises in the region -- bison -- has a big champion in Bill Keitel, co-owner of the Buffalo Billfold Co.
The company, of Worthington, Minn., uses the hides of more than 2,000 buffalo a year -- a good-sized herd in the Dakotas and surrounding regions.
"Doing one batch of wallets we probably cut through about eight different hides," says Haley Moore, the store manager. "Our production has gone up in the past year."
Dave Carter, executive director of the National Bison Association in Denver, says the bison industry is as healthy today as it's been in modern times. Bison prices for meat from a young bull carcass was reported on average at $4.02 per pound in a U.S. Department of Agriculture monthly report on Sept. 4 -- the highest ever, since the agency has been tracking it.
"As we learned 15 years ago, and as every rancher knows, you don't make money if you don't sell the entire animal," Carter says. "Today the bison industry is in the strongest place it's ever been. People like Bill have helped us create value. The amount of volume he does for us is important."
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Carter says the bison industry is best suited to smaller enterprises like Keitel's because it only processes about 60,000 animals a year. The U.S. beef industry, to compare, processes 120,000 a day.
Carter describes the Worthington company as a "trailblazer" in the nation's bison leather specialty industry.
Keitel has accumulated some antique tools over the years, and the shop includes some that are more than a century old.
The Keitels' early store was called the Cow's Outside. Seventeen years ago, the company started using buffalo leather because of consumer interest.
"It was perhaps because of the western mystique, the indigenous nature of the animal. It was grown on the short-grass prairies of North and South Dakota."
40 product lines
Today, the Buffalo Billfold Co. employs up to six or seven people on a regular basis, working in an assembly line on about 40 different product lines. The biggest items are belts, billfolds and purses, sold for a fashion element, but also durable.
"We try to make something that's functional as well as decorative," Keitel says. "In a craft or artisan type of work, you have to be able to adapt. Everything changes."
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They supply buffalo leather products to 150 stores and museums across the country, including the Denver Museum, stores around Yellowstone National Park, all of the stores in Custer State Park in South Dakota and the Prairie Edge in Rapid City.
The biggest concern in the past three or four years has been keeping up with orders.
