By Ron Wilson, Director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

Let's go to an island off the coast of Maine. A worker is tending cattle there, and he's wearing a soft cloth knit pair of gloves. You could find the same type of gloves on people in Alaska, Hawaii, and almost every state from there to Maine – and they all came from rural western Kansas. The source of these gloves is today's Kansas Profile.

Meet Jan Huck from Scott City, Kansas. Jan grew up on a feedyard near Lyons, Kansas and went to Southwestern College where she met her husband. After teaching and coaching several years, she and her husband moved back to his hometown of Scott City where she opened a sporting goods store.

One day a local cattle feedyard made a special order of 200 screen printed jackets, and Jan realized she could specialize in those types of products for the cattle industry. She started producing decorated goods such as caps, jackets, cloth bags, and other items featuring the names and custom-designed logos of various feedyards, dairies, and related businesses. Such products are also called "branded apparel."

These products had a lot of appeal to her customers in the cattle business, so she started promoting them at industry trade shows and the business grew. During one of those trade shows, she was approached by a Texas insectary about offering another service to those feedyards: Biological fly control. Flies are a huge problem around feedyards, so these folks thought that would be a service that Jan could offer to her customers. Jan turned them down at first, but eventually agreed to give it a look.

In 1987, she began offering an integrated pest management fly control program to feedyards in Kansas, and it went very well. But of course, flies are not the only pests which can be a problem. In later years, she added similar pest control programs for rats, weeds, and birds.

The company is known as PlainJans, and it offers both decorated goods and full service pest control programs. The common thread, so to speak, between them is the customer. Jan says, "We know the cattle business, and we get things done right."

The company slogan is, Kaps, Koats, and Killin' things - all spelled with a K. As you can tell, Jan is creative and has a healthy sense of humor.

So what is the result? Today, PlainJans is the largest commercial livestock pest control company in the nation, and it's located in Scott City, Kansas, population 3,765 people. Now, that's rural.

PlainJans has seven pest control trucks averaging 40,000 miles per year serving customers across the central and southern plains.

And what about those cotton knit gloves? A few years ago, Jan started offering these custom printed gloves in addition to her other apparel products. These are sometimes called chore gloves or roper gloves, because calf ropers really like them. The gloves are warm, lightweight, and inexpensive. PlainJans imprints logos and addresses on the back of the gloves as promotional items. These have proven extraordinarily popular.

Jan says, "We have branded goods customers in almost every state, coast to coast." 

The company website is www.plainjans.com. The PlainJans staff travels to trade shows all over the country.

PlainJans offers something special at its booths at those trade shows, because Jan is a strong supporter of the American Cancer Society.

Jan says, "Cancer has affected many of the people who work here, and this is something we feel passionate about." PlainJans will offer printed gloves, embroidered caps, and bags to people at the trade shows in exchange for a small donation to the American Cancer Society.  In the past three years, the cancer society has received $25,000 in donations from PlainJans.

It's time to take our leave from this island off the coast of Maine, where a worker is wearing knit gloves from rural Kansas. This island happens to be owned by the Rockefeller family, who orders these gloves all the way from Scott City, Kansas. We salute Jan Huck and all those associated with PlainJans, Inc. for making a difference with entrepreneurship and creativity. They offer caps, coats, critter control – and even caring about cancer.

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The mission of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development is to enhance rural development by helping rural people help themselves. The Kansas Profile radio series and columns are produced with assistance from the K-State Research and Extension Department of Communications News Unit. Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/huckboyd/.