As seen in The Amarillo Daily News Tuesday, December 1, 1992
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HEREFORD, TX - Winter conditions during a football playoff game prompted Ruth Black to stitch up stadium bags for herself and her husband, Herschel. Those stitches eventually led to H&R Manufacturing.

Today H&R Manufacturing has modern, computerized embroidering machines, silk screening equipment and sewing equipment. But in 1968, Mrs. Black said, the business started because friends and people sitting around them in the football stadium wanted a stadium snug sack too.

She sewed the first 50 bags on her sewing machine at home. In 1969, they decided to go into business. The first product was a quilted nylon stadium bag. They contracted the sewing and did the shipping from their garage.

They expanded their product line to include quilted vests. Mrs. Black had sewn a couple of vests for her sons, Greg and Carey, to wear when they showed their animals at stock shows.

"We decided if our kids wanted them, then other kids would," Black said.

He began making calls on FFA chapters and school organizations, in addition to civic clubs, offering the stadium bag and vests as fund-raisers. Black said he traveled throughout Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.

In 1973, they bought their first sewing machines, rented a building and began doing all the sewing themselves. They made the vests and snug bags in school colors and began marketing them nationwide through mail-outs to the schools.

Their big break came in 1975 when Land O Lakes, a Midwestern farm cooperative, approached them with a contract to produce hundreds of vests on which they would put their logo patch.

Land O Lakes had Farmer Appreciation Days in the early winter and open houses and farmers received a vest if they booked fuel or fertilizer early.

That was the first experience with farm-related customers. The next year, they set up a booth at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the Fort Worth Livestock Show and the American Royal in Kansas City.

The product line expanded in 1981 to include a satin nylon jacket. That year they also bought out a silk screening store. Mrs. Black said they had never seen it done, but that was the popular thing at the time.

"That's when we went into personalizing jackets," she said. They began silk screening company logos, school emblems, 4-H and FFA logos on their blank jackets.

The silk screening brought additional business with caps, T-shirts and sweat shirts, she said.

They increased the number of employees from 6 to 10 and were still expanding. The next step was freehand embroidery on the jackets, Mrs. Black said.

Carey Black, who is now the manager, joined the business in 1981, and in 1983 they bought a computerized embroidery machine, one of the first in this area, Black said. They now have eight computer embroidery machines.

The Blacks also negotiated a contract with Ruidoso Downs to put in a gift shop and sell their products.

Now, their business is primarily agriculture, working with sales promotions for various companies, doing safety awards and putting together jackets for all types of businesses, from feedlots to seed and fertilizer companies.

Through their sales booth at the Houston Livestock Show, they have marketed their products to Germany, Australia, Canada, England, Bermuda and Mexico.

A crew of 14 takes care of the orders in Hereford and goes on the road during the livestock show season. They are divided into work sections: Cutting, sewing, embroidery, silk screening and shipping.

"We are a small business, so we can deal in service, immediate turnaround," Mrs. Black said.