“How can you smell a piece of leather online? How can you look at it and have any idea about its quality?”
– Cherie Geerdes — owner of The Bony Pony

If you don’t believe that timing is everything, you might want to ask Cherie Geerdes about the wisdom of the adage. The Mount Vernon owner of The Bony Pony, a purveyor of all things horse and Western, was just two weeks away from opening her new retail location when the pandemic hit. I remember passing by the store in March, as Meyer Sign was installing its new signage — just as the first lockdown went into effect to “flatten the curve” — and thinking, “This can’t be good.”

So here we are, eight months later…and The Bony Pony is still here as well, but in an enhanced form. You might say it has gone from a spritely canter to a full on gallop. In fact, if you subscribe to the local newspaper you’ve probably seen a prominent print ad promoting “Saddles, Tack, Western & English Apparel, Western Boots, Belts, Purses, Breyer Collection.” And while the store continues its online retail operations, it is also preparing for a major Black Friday sale that will extend through Sunday, November 29.

Once the new Bony Pony location opened its doors for masked and socially distant shoppers, I knew I had to write a story about it — and not just because Cherie Geerdes’ is a Meyer Sign customer. What I really wanted to know was how a local business has so far managed to survive a public health crises that has shuttered so many other retailers.

This story is an answer to that question. It’s an answer that I’ve let Cherie Geerdes tell in her own words as she shares her history and that of her nearly three decades old store. As it turns out, while timing is no small ingredient when it comes to business success, another ingredient can be found in yet another adage: “you make your own luck.” To be sure, Cherie Geerdes would probably be the first person to tell you that she and her business have been blessed — but a large part of that blessing has had more to do with faith, hard work, and conviction than with random chance or fickle fate.

This is Cherie Geerdes’ story — the story of a horse girl who became a horse woman and the owner of a store for horse people. It seems appropriate to be publishing this on Thanksgiving, since one of the things we have to be thankful for is the perseverance of our local businesses and their contributions to what makes life in the Magic Skagit so magic.

Story of a Horse Person

I was born in Seattle and raised in Friday Harbor, and have been in horses kind of all my life. My mom had horses. I got my own horse at 13 and started showing at that age, and just continued to progress to different horses and continued to show. Even through college I did some of that as well.

I went to college in Oklahoma. I had decided to get a degree in accounting, and at that time the college I chose had the number one student in the country in accounting based on their score on the CPA exam. The college was Oral Roberts University. I was also looking for a Christian university, so I thought, “Why not?”.

The weather in Oklahoma took a little bit to get used to — we don’t have things like tornadoes — but the people were amazing. I love the people of Oklahoma. They are laid back, a bit of that Southern “you-don’t-get-too-upset-about-anything.” And they had horses. Oklahoma and Texas are big horse country, so every weekend I could go to some big show or head down to Dallas to watch the “World’s” or to Oklahoma City to watch something else. I also got to see a lot of friends who would come out for shows, so that part of the experience I liked a lot. What I didn’t like about Oklahoma was that you can’t smell water and you can’t see mountains. They’re just not there.

I loved my school, and I got my accounting degree and got a job with Ernst and Whinney in downtown Seattle. So I worked in downtown Seattle and lived in Bothell. I still had my horse, but wasn’t showing at that point. I worked there for five years, including the merger with Arthur Young. It was kind of a bloodbath because they didn’t need as many people. I made it through all the layoff rounds, but I thought, “You know, I’d like a bit more control over my life.” I don’t want to be beholden to somebody for whom it doesn’t matter whether you’re good or not. Are you on the right job? Do you have the right drinking buddy? My dad had always been self-employed, so it didn’t scare me at all to try and do this.

I had gotten married a year and a half before all this to my horse shoer, and he was living in the Valley, so I promised him that at some point we’d move back there. I decided that I wanted to do this store, so I did a full business plan and got an SBA loan while I was still working. I had it all in place before I quit. We found a location, made the move up here, and in a couple of months we had the place up and running. We’ve been here since August 1991.

My first husband and I had been trying to obtain this property (for the new store) starting in the late ‘90s, but the owner wouldn’t sell. After my first husband passed away in 2007, I continued to try and purchase the property. After the owner died, his kids sold it to us three years later. Once we (Cherie had remarried by this time) had the property we wanted to pay it off before we built a new store, and two years ago we started doing soil testing and the other preliminary requirements. It took another full year before we could break ground.

My timing was not so great, but it was what it was, and it was a two-year process that didn’t count on a pandemic. We were within two weeks of finishing this building when COVID hit, and prior to COVID I’d run all the numbers — I knew what it was going to take and I really felt like we would be able to pull it off. It’s still a risk, but we were this far and we weren’t going to back out when COVID hit. We couldn’t just walk away from a building we still had a debt on — so you push forward and get it finished. But it’s still a little scary.

We still own the original building, and it is going up for lease. As we’re talking I’m making up a floor plan to send to the realtor, so it should be on the market any day now. The old store is 2,400 sf, and the new store is 6,050. The old store was an auto body shop when I bought it, so we converted it. The new store is completely set up for retail. Other than our normal seasonal differences, we haven’t actually added any more inventory. You can just see it all now.

We had so much inventory in the old store that you just cannot believe it. We used a lot of containers for storage, which helped keep stuff off the floor. People would walk in and look at our boot wall and say, “Is this all you have?”. There are 3,000 pairs of boots here! How many do you need? Now they walk in and say, “Wow, we didn’t know you had so many boots!”. Well, yeah! You just never saw them.

We’ve always had an online presence. We do all the web work in house, which gives us complete control, and we have an amazing crew. We’re not very big, but everyone is very dedicated and we care about our customers. When someone visits us online we want to be sure that they can see exactly what we have, and that if they come in it will be here.

The name Bony Pony came from my first husband. He had this big, fat paint horse whose name was “Bo,” and he always called him, “Bo the Bony Pony.” We wasn’t a pony, and he wasn’t bony — but my husband thought it was funny. Unless you intentionally starve a pony, they’re all fat. If you look at our logo, you’ll see that it’s a big fat pony. We didn’t want a name with “tack” or “western” in it…we just wanted to find something that was cute. But so many people thought our old building was a bar or restaurant. Are you serious? Would you really eat someplace this weird?

How would we describe our store? It depends on who we’re talking to. For horse people, we tell them we’re a complete store for horse and rider. We outfit the rider and the horse from top to bottom for pretty much any event. For those people who don’t ride, we’re trying to say that we’re the complete store for western wear and boots — because we are. We drop the “horse” part because those people already know who we are. What we’re trying to promote is an American heritage. In Texas you don’t have to promote it because that’s just what everyone does. But out here, once you get out of Seattle there are a lot of people who really enjoy the country lifestyle. and they are working out in their farm or ranch and they need this kind of equipment.

Our customers are amazing. We have loyal and dedicated customers from all walks of life. You have your English riders who tend to be more upper income, to someone who has grandpa’s horse in the backyard and just wants to go trail riding. We try to meet the needs of all, and we are probably in the middle somewhere. We don’t do the super high end and we don’t do the super junk low end because I want to sell quality — that we know is going to last and give you value for the dollar you’re spending.

Now that our new store is open we’re doing a Black Friday sale running Friday through Sunday. We’re having special Sunday hours. We haven’t been open on Sundays because of COVID, but we’ll be open on Sundays now through the holidays. This is our best sale of the year. It’s 20% off of everything with a few exceptions such as saddles and certain brands that we just can’t discount much. If you come early, from 6 to 9 on Friday, we take an extra 10% off the sale price. We have a very generous return policy.

We need more small business. The sad thing is that I’m one of the few who is making an expansion in my industry. It feels good, but it’s sad too. And to be perfectly honest, when I’m done I probably won’t be able to sell this place. I’ll probably just have to liquidate it. That’s what most of these stores do because they are hard to sell; it takes a lot of work and a lot of dedication. Retail itself is just dying. We’re all going to be beholden to Amazon in another 20 years and wondering, “what happened?”.

How can you smell a piece of leather online? How can you look at it and have any idea about its quality?