A Chat With May’s Profile, Suzanne Vlietstra, president of Hobby Horse Clothing Co.

CS: What’s something that’s more secretive about you or your business that would surprise people?
SV: I think people would be surprised at how small our business really is. We’ve always cast a big shadow. When our current designer came to interview with us, she came to our little building — she’s actually from Munich, Germany and I met her on the Internet — she wanted to intern with us. I said, “We’re too small for interns.” But we struck up a communication and chatted about horses and a couple of years later she e-mailed me and said, “Hey, I graduated from design school, I’m out of design school in Munich.” She did her senior theses on Western wear, believe it or not, in Munich. She said, “I’m living in Southern California, what’s going on?” So I hired her. But when she came to interview with us she thought that she was just coming to the human resources building on our campus. Well, it’s the whole building. I think people would be very surprised to see how small our company really is. And that it, in its funky way, runs fairly efficiently. And has always been profitable. And that other little catalogers should be proud, not intimidated, by what they’re accomplishing and the world they live in.