• Sophia Steglich turns a lifelong connection to horses and western wear into a growing business

The Star Valley Chamber of Commerce recently named Buffalo Brims its August Business of the Month. Steglich joined the Weekday Wake-up to discuss the shop, which specializes in cleaning, reshaping, refurbishing and creating custom hats.

“We do kind of a lot, everything from top to bottom,” Steglich said. “We do a lot of cleaning, reshaping and refurbishing of hats. That’s kind of our mainstream.”

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The business has also expanded into fully custom hatmaking. Rather than simply reshaping an existing hat, Steglich said she can begin with a blank and build a piece fitted to an individual customer.

“Now I’m able to make custom hats fully to your head from top to bottom,” she said. “Not just getting a hat and shaping it, but getting a blank and stretching, pouncing, sizing, making custom brim plates and doing it all, hand sewing.”

Steglich said her interest in hat care began through her years showing and riding horses. As a competitor, she often needed a clean, properly shaped hat for show days, but found the process of traveling for service inconvenient.

“I would always travel to get mine cleaned, and then by the time I got home, they’d be stuck in their box, steamy, and they’d come out wavy,” she said. “So I’d have to kind of learn from YouTube and mess with mine at home for show day.”

She later worked with Marilyn Hartman, who helped start the Jackson Hole Hat Company, and traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for private instruction with Gray Collective. There, Steglich learned to make custom hats from start to finish.

Buffalo Brims has been open about a year and a half, with its two-year anniversary coming in November. Steglich said opening the storefront was not originally part of her immediate plan.

“I actually ended up with my space first,” she said. “This was a plan for maybe later in life, when I had everything else put together. But here we are, and I’m so thankful.”

At 23, Steglich said she is grateful to pursue the business full-time. “I get to live the dream now,” she said.

The shop, located at 391 North Main St. across the highway from the Thayne post office, carries some finished hats, refurbished secondhand pieces and a summer palm-hat line from Sun Body Hats. It also provides display space for local artisans.

Steglich said hats can be made for a range of styles and customers, not solely western or horse-show wear.

“Anybody can wear a hat,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be full cowboy. It can be dress. It can be a nice going-out hat. It can be a flat-brim hat.”

Looking ahead, Steglich hopes Buffalo Brims becomes widely recognized throughout the region.

“I hope everyone has a hat on their head and when they say, ‘Where’d you get that?’ it’s Buffalo Brims,” she said.