We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amy Bond a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, appreciate you joining us today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?

For the first several years, my company grew at a beautiful pace that I was able to easily manage myself with only 2 other full time employees. I worked 6 to 7 days a week and as many hours a day as necessary to personally oversee or complete any task unfinished. I did all of my own bookkeeping, invoicing, payables, buying, merchandising, pricing, product listing for e-commerce, social media management, shipping and in store sales for I’d say the first 10 years. My biggest challenge in business ownership/management has been finding people I could trust to turn over some of those responsibilities to as my business grew. It has taken another 8 years of searching but I have slowly built a team that I can depend on and trust so that I can focus on running and growing the business instead of working in the business 50 to 60 hours a week. A couple of years ago, I opened a second location. It took the people in the town we expanded to over 3 years to convince me to give it a try, as I was very hesitant due to my fear of not being able to maintain the level of customer service I want to provide my customers in a second location that I couldn’t be in every day. The store did very well from the day it opened, but after 2 years of staff turnover and frustrations of trying to find and retain a great staff for that location, I closed it just before the store’s 2 year anniversary. Through this experience I learned that, for my particular store and what I want to offer my customers, adding multiple locations is not the avenue we need to go. Instead, I am focusing on different ways for us to grow and improve our one location and make it as profitable and efficiently run as possible, and most importantly….maintaining the level of customer service my customers deserve.

Amy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born and raised on a horse farm where my father bred, raised, showed, and trained American Paint Horses. Horses have always been a large part of my life and as a young adult I kind of followed in my father’s footsteps and raised and trained horses. In 2007, just a year after my father passed, I decided to open a little tack shop on my horse farm in his honor. I wanted to offer good quality working tack and stable supplies for the area, as I was tired of having to drive to Columbus or Cleveland for a nice pair of leather reins or a new bit. I had 2 young children and wanted to be able to do something from home and be there when they got home from school. My shop offered a great selection of good quality new and used saddle and everything you needed to ride or take care of a horse including grain and bedding. After a couple of years and an abundance of phone calls with people asking if we sold cowboy boots, I said to myself “maybe I need to start selling boots too.” Four years into the business I could see my little idea was going to be more than a hobby and I started looking for a commercial building to move it to as the traffic was getting too heavy coming to my farm and I needed a larger space for my store. I ended up buying a 2 story old brick building in the Village of Greenwich that had been empty and neglected for many years. My father had a little saddle shop in this town when I was a young girl and it just felt right that I should move mine to that same town, only two doors down from where his shop had been decades prior. Over the next several years my inventory began to change over to more boots, added jeans, hats, purses, belts and other western apparel and accessories and the tack and saddle inventory became less. I was selling saddles and tack online and shipping all over the world. In 2015, I started my website and started shipping our boots and apparel all over the country. Fast forward to 2025 and my store now occupies 4 storefronts in downtown Greenwich and offers hundreds of styles of boots and a huge apparel selection for men, women, and children. We no longer carry any tack or saddles, but everything imaginable for a person who enjoys western fashion and good quality boots, shoes and apparel. Through our website we ship all over the USA and Canada and we have a huge global social media following. I run the business with 8 other women, which is something that I am very proud of. Woman founded, owned, and operated.

Have you ever had to pivot?

March 2020, COVID arrives. My small business that was just growing and booming and doing so well is suddenly told it must close it’s doors to the public. I had 7 people plus myself that depend on a paycheck from me every week and I had to shut down. I could not accept that, I could not lose what I had worked so very hard for for 13 years. I had to take care of my staff that depended on me and my business. I decided that if our customers couldn’t come to us, we would come to them, via FaceBook Live. Twice a day, 5 days a week, a few of my employees and myself would do FaceBook Live Sales and offer porch pickup or shipping of the items they purchased. The support from our fans was amazing and this kept my staff working and the bills paid for many weeks until we were able to open our doors back up and get back to business. I will forever be grateful to the Facebook platform and our loyal followers for that lifeline.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Being honest and fair, kind and grateful. I try to always show the community and people that have made Painted Cowgirl grow and flourish gratitude for making this dream possible. We care about our customers and will do anything we have to to make sure they are satisfied and taken care of.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.paintedcowgirlwesternstore.com
• Instagram: paintedcowgirlwesternstore
• Facebook: Painted Cowgirl Western Store

Image Credits

Lynn Caudell Photography