Hunter Harlow spent years studying rocks. He tasted them, too, for science: a quick grit test tells you whether you're holding silt or clay. He walked into the Rogers That studio as the brains, the beard and the boss behind Sendero Provisions Co., a Waco, Texas apparel brand that began with a single hat and now dresses people from head to toe.
Host Rogers Healy opened by introducing his friend as “El Jefe.” Sendero is Spanish for “path,” and Hunter's has been an unlikely one: from a geology dissertation he nearly forgot to submit to a lifestyle brand with about twenty categories and a loyal following.
01 How does a geologist end up making hats?
Hunter is a sixth-generation Texan who grew up in Prosper, back when it was “one stoplight and one cop and cornfields.” He met his wife in eighth grade, started dating her in tenth, and went to Baylor for geology. His dad was a landman, so the oil and gas world was always around him.
His fieldwork took him through the Four Corners region. He had also grown up visiting Big Bend National Park, and he and a friend figured they could make better hats than the ones they saw there. The first design put a topographic map under the visor so the scene on the patch matched. “It was a way for us just to be creative and chase the things that we like doing.”
“It was a way for us just to be creative and chase the things that we like doing.”
It started as a hat club for friends and family. Then they figured out online ads, and the outdoorsy side of geology (fly fishing, canoeing, backpacking), mixed with the ranching and rodeo roots on his mother's side in West Kansas, struck a chord.
02 What does a scientist bring to a brand?
Plenty, Hunter says. He has always been an entrepreneur at heart, even in the lab, where he took cutting-edge methods from his Baylor professors and put his own twist on them. At Sendero he took the same approach. “We weren't scared to fail.” They launched new categories without knowing how to make them. Denim pearl snaps? “We're gonna figure it out.” They talked to people who knew how, and found designers better at it than they were.
He tells students the same thing: the soft skills of STEM, such as self-taught learning, pattern recognition and the scientific method, are what he uses every day. “It just looks a little bit different. It's not rocks.”
Early on, he did everything himself: took the order, packed the hat, taped the box, drove it to the post office, then went home and designed next season's art. There was no market research, only a knack for spotting white space and treating each opportunity as one of the few at-bats you get.
03 What was the hardest part of growing it?
The first big snag was caused by success: how do you ship a hundred hats a day when you have a back room and no team? Then came sourcing and international terms. He remembers being upstairs in a Florida beach rental, on a call with China about getting product into the country for the first time, while his family was out on the sand. “The snags will come. You will have snags. And you will have more than one, too, if you keep going.”
Both men credit their wives for encouraging them to chase these dreams. Hunter has also built his team the way you'd build a family. His business partner, Nate Landreth, is his “other wife,” and the company runs on trust. “They're built on trust. And if you don't have those work spouses, then you've got holes.”
04 Why Waco, and why dresses?
Hunter built Sendero in a town without a Sendero. Magnolia blazed a trail, but there was no mentor to call and little access to apparel talent. Companies that grew out of Waco, he says, had to be “buttoned up” with systems, people and process. Over the past five to ten years that has changed. “It is very much a blank canvas. It might be twenty-five percent painted.”
The biggest surprise has been dresses. None of the Texas brands he followed had a women's line, so Sendero launched one with no idea how it would land. The black La Dahlia dress sold out almost immediately and has stayed a bestseller. By his count, dress sales are up roughly a thousand percent year over year. “No one expected us to be picking up the phone and reordering dresses every week.”
05 What is Sendero in sixty seconds?
Rogers put him on a shot clock. Sendero's slogan is West of Ordinary. Between legacy heritage brands and everything else there is an in-between, and that is where Sendero lives: humor, fun, and clothes that match the lifestyle. The one piece he'd be buried in is the Wyatt Pearl Snap. His favorite rock is sandstone. The Weight is the theme song, and the park is Big Bend, hands down.
“The West got boring and Sendero didn't.”
The most overrated rock? Pumice. “It's a rock that floats. That's literally all it does.” There was also a long tangent on The Band, which Rogers, a collector of music memorabilia, enjoyed more than anyone.
06 What do you want to be remembered for?
When Rogers asked about his legacy, Hunter pointed to Sendero's internal mission statement. If the people he has worked with, hired and loved say he did those three things in that order, “that's all I care about.” The best advice he has received? “Don't go to bed angry.”
To find Sendero, go to senderopc.com or look for @senderopc on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. To find Hunter, he says, “Come to Waco, let's get a coffee.”