Maybe the lassies will swoon, maybe not. But the kilt-wearing, bottle-toting deliverymen of Highland Water are going to draw attention, said Keith Warner, the company’s 45-year-old owner.
That’s why his employees began arriving at customers’ doors in kilts Tuesday.
“Water is an undifferentiated commodity,” he said. “How many of your customers remember you were there the following day? This is a way for us to get uninvisible.”
The company’s fleet of seven trucks and vans now bears stenciled signs that scream (what else?) “Men in Kilts Deliver.” Also, pictured is a man in a kilt who, we may assume, is delivering.
Highland Water was valued at $1.2 million when Warner bought it in 2004, and it serves about 1,000 customers, mostly commercial. Last year, Warner was thinking about ways to make his company stand out when he went to the Renaissance Festival. Surrounded by participants dressed in the robes and rags of the Middle Ages, he got an idea.
A costume could get the company noticed. And with a company name that conjures the Scottish Highlands, what better costume than a kilt?
Kilts have a romantic attraction, even for a tech-savvy generation.
“They have a wonderful effect on girls,” said John Thornton, executive director of the Colorado Scottish Festival. “I started wearing a kilt when I was 45 years old, and my son started wearing one at 14. I wish I had known about it when I was 14.”
Warner’s isn’t the first local business to glom on to the kilt, a bonny symbol of manhood that was the rage in the Scottish Highlands before Columbus sailed to America. A construction crew in Littleton called Karpenters in Kilts adopted tartans in 2002.
And at one time, Martin Faith also considered having employees of his Centennial-based Scottish Stained Glass wear kilts. He decided against it because they spend a lot of time on ladders, installing stained glass, and the view from below could be shocking to some.
“If you are a true Scotsman, you never wear anything under your kilt,” he confided.
Faith, a Glasgow native with a lilting burr, has an affinity for the kilt. He wears one while promoting the company’s craftsmanship at home and garden shows. To westernize his outfit, he wore a cowboy hat with his kilt to the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo.
“The reaction is always tremendous,” Faith said. “A lot of people come up and tell you their granny came from Scotland. It always attracts people.”
His company sponsors the annual Spinal Muscular Atrophy/Scottish Stained Glass Golf Tournament, a charity event at which participants are invited to wear kilts. Those who do get to shave a stroke off their scores, and last year 20 of the 120 golfers were kilted, Faith said.
Kilts are almost sure-fire attention-getters in Colorado, where 203,201 residents trace roots to Scotland, and another 1 million to elsewhere in the British Isles, Thornton said. The state celebrates Colorado Tartan Day on April 6. In 1997, the state’s General Assembly chose an official state tartan plaid that blends forest green, blue, black, white, lavender, yellow and red.
Not everyone at Highland Water is eager to slip into a kilt, Warner said. Even though employees will wear long underwear or shorts underneath, one quit rather than make deliveries in apparel that to some looks like a skirt.
He remembers his employees’ reaction when he first appeared on the job with a kilt: “They said, ‘What is that, some new uniform?’ I said, ‘Yes, it is, and it is not optional.’ ”
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
