Red Ants Pants
a perfect fit for Montana
Traci Rosenbaum | Published 10:03 p.m. MT Oct. 5, 2016
For owner Sarah Calhoun, Red Ants Pants goes beyond mere apparel.
“These pants are meaning something to our customers,” she said. “There’s women wearing these pants going into surgery because they feel stronger and braver, and that’s kind of amazing to me that a product can instill such emotional power.”
Calhoun celebrates a decade in business this month, and the milestone provides her with a chance to look back on the past, look forward to the future – and throw a party in the present.
After growing up on a farm in New England, Calhoun spent about five years after college leading trail crews and instructing for Outward Bound. In these jobs, she always wore men’s work pants and lamented that nothing was available for women.
In 2004, Calhoun moved to Bozeman with the idea of starting a business that would sell work apparel made for a woman’s body.
“It really came from … not having pants that fit,” she said. “There were a lot of men’s work pants on the market – at least a dozen different companies – but nothing out there for women. When you have curves and hips, it just doesn’t work very well in square men’s pants.
Calhoun spent a year in Bozeman laying the groundwork for Red Ants Pants, but when it came time to open her company’s doors, she decided a major city was not the place to be.
“I had spent about a year in Bozeman but wanted to be in a more authentic, rural cow town,” Calhoun said.
It was reading White Sulphur Springs native Ivan Doig’s memoir “This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind” that inspired Calhoun to move to the small town more than 90 miles south of Great Falls.
From the Great Falls Tribune