Meet Ty Bowman, the founder of Lifetime Leather Company in San Tan Valley.
Inside the home of Lifetime Leather Company, in a large warehouse-looking building filled with machines old and new, workers make everything from bags to wallets to belts to all kinds of other leather goods. Among tables filled with tools and large pieces of leather, Bowman stopped to point out one spot in particular.
"In our origin story, this is the original desk, the first desk that we got, where we made actually everything by hand from scratch," Bowman said. "This is where we do all of our cutting, and over the years we’ve kind of evolutionized from cutting with scissors to having that little roller cutter to eventually going to hydraulic press cutting — we went to laser and then we eventually came to this machine, which helps us cut a lot of stuff."
The space is filled with both full rolls of leather, as well as smaller pieces that’ve been cut and are waiting to be turned into something. Bowman says leather cutting is a lot like puzzle work, in the sense that you have to figure out how to fit the most pieces into the material you have.
And that origin story he mentioned? It involves a zip-lining accident when Bowman was a teenager, more than two decades ago. It left him unsure if he’d ever walk again, and needing ways to pass the time. Among other crafts, he picked up leather, which he’d learned about earlier in his life and he just kind of didn’t stop — even after he recovered and was, in fact, able to walk.
Full conversation
BOWMAN: I learned from the Boy Scouts, so it's a mixture in our origin story. We have like how that injury set me up where I was in bed a lot. I did calligraphy and leather work, but I did leather work because I had done the leather working merit badge. And I was pretty good at it. I enjoyed it, so I started leather work when I was 13. And making bags and pouches and stuff, and then working through it, reading books, 'cause there wasn't YouTube or anything back then. So I had a lot of leather books and would learn from that, so it's kind of a traditional style. And then once we started in 2014, 2015, YouTube really became pretty valuable.
BRODIE: I would think though that in the end this strikes me as something you need to do in order to get better at. You can read all the books and watch all the videos you want, but you actually have to do it.
BOWMAN: Yeah, trial and error is king, fail and fail fast. And two — Leather's honestly like so forgiving. It's a really forgiving medium to a degree, if you make a mistake, it's like, huh. It won't work for that shape anymore, but you could make something smaller.
BRODIE: So you mentioned that after your accident you were in bed for a while. You sort of went back to something that you had done when you were younger. Did that in any way sort of show your growing interest in leather work, did that help in your recovery at all? Did it help you sort of get back up on your feet?
BOWMAN: Yeah, it definitely helps a lot when I did get hurt, they almost amputated my leg. And they told me that my chances of walking again would be like next to zero. So that was really discouraging, but anything that you could do to take your mind off it was helpful and crafting was always really fun.
BRODIE: I want to take you back to when you're in bed, getting back into leather. How did you go from that to all of this?
BOWMAN: So it started out slow. So when I was recovering, that was when I was 15 years old when I got in that accident, and it wasn't until I was about 20-22 years old when I started really pushing the leather. I was working at Home Depot at the time and because I did construction before that, but with the way the economy was, the bottom fell out in construction and there was no work. And I was actually living in a little one-bedroom apartment with my wife. And Christmas was coming and we had no money. I didn't really know what I was gonna do. And my wife's grandfather, who had passed, willed me a box of leather tools. I have them over at that desk, but with those leather tools that I had, I was driving, and I'm like, “What am I gonna do for Christmas?” It hit me and I was like, “Oh you know what? I could make stuff. I know how to make stuff.”
And there was this lady who had a couch on the side of the road, and I asked her if I could have it and she said yeah. And I cut the leather off of that couch and from that couch started making leather goods. I made bags, wallets, like a phone case and a bunch of stuff. I made like 20-something items for all my friends and family. And it was a huge hit. Everybody really, really liked it. And I started getting requests: “Can you make this? Can you make that?”
And then I was working part time at Home Depot. And I started with a pager scanner phone. And I had like scissors and the apron, and I'd make these little gadget holders. And people were like, "Wow, that's really cool. Where did you get that?" I was like, “Oh, I made it.” And they're like, “Oh, could you make this? Could you make that?” I was making more money selling leather goods at Home Depot than I was working at Home Depot.
BRODIE: So you like had a side hustle going on inside Home Depot?
BOWMAN: Absolutely, yeah, like I made like that entire Home Depot — I made them all scanner cases and it was wild, but It was really fun. And then I eventually got to the point where I was like, I would make more money doing this at home than working at Home Depot. And it was a huge risk and we did it. And at the time my wife was going to nursing school and that was within the first six months of Lifetime Leather. And it was really starting to take off. And we were like we just had to sit down and be like: I think that if we both worked together on this one goal that we would do better than if you went to nursing school. And it was like the Vikings burning their ships. Was literally — we called and she gave up her spot in the nursing, which she'd waited three years for and already had done all the prereqs for. So when she did that it was like, it's for reals now and after that, it had to work.
BRODIE: One of the things that we hear a lot when we talk to people who are good at making things is that there's so much more to the business that they find out sort of as they go, like the business side of it, the marketing side of it. I'm wondering how that's been for you.
BOWMAN: Yeah, definitely I think if most people realize how much goes into business they would quit before they start. I think the secret for me is that I was dumb enough to think I could do it because there's so much that you have to do that you're not prepared for. If you knew about it you'd probably quit.
BRODIE: What do you think your teenage self who is stuck in bed in a wheelchair, going back to the Cub Scout merit badge would think and say if he could see what you have here.
BOWMAN: When I was hurt, I wanted to give up because I was being told I was like, you know what, you'll probably never walk again. I got a brochure for things you could do in a wheelchair. And I remember being like, ‘This is bad.’ At the time when I was 15, I was actually, training every day to be a tennis player and the U.S. Open was playing while I was in the hospital and I was just super depressed. But my dad was really really into the power of positive thinking and like motivational stuff, so he he just like was able to talk to me and be like, “Hey, you know what like, the power of your thoughts can shape your entire life. So if you think you're done, you're done, but it's whatever you think about most of the time it will happen.”
Using goal setting and making lists, I was able to plan out what I wanted my future life to look like. And how I planned out my life from then is very close to what my life is right now. I'd say almost identical. Like that accident that I had with my legs, I heard nothing for a year: “I'm just so sorry, I'm so sorry.” But now that I look back at it, that was the biggest blessing ever.
BRODIE: That was Ty Bowman, founder of Lifetime Leather Company in San Tan Valley.
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