Leather rules at Cowboy Christmas Gift Show

The four essential elements necessary to sustain a Western-themed life, according to a browsing of the Cowboy Christmas Gift Show in town this week as part of the big rodeo shindig, are as follows:

■ Driftwood.

■ Turquoise.

■ Leather.

■ Antlers.

Among these, leather is king.

The show covers 300,000 square feet of concrete floor at the Las Vegas Convention Center with stuff from vendors large and small.

There are leather boots and belts, leather purses and saddles and saddlebags and shoes. Shotgun sleeves and wallets and cell phone holders. Book covers -- the Bible covers are especially popular. Briefcases. Earrings. Fringed skirts. Christmas ornaments. Chaps. Knife sheaths and axe covers and straps to hold your spurs onto your boots. There are leather gun belts and honest-to-God Old West-style holsters with spaces for the ammo. Picture frames and Christmas stockings and lamps and napkin rings and pillows and duffel bags and koozies for your cold beer and coasters and, wait a second, is that Santa Claus performing a dangerous stunt with a sledge hammer?

Why yes. Santa Claus is bellowing like Vince the ShamWow guy at a trade show for shammy enthusiasts.

"Time and time again you cannot smash the M&M," he barks. "Or even Santa's hand."

Santa and his crew are pitching a product. It's called Impact Gel. It'll go in your shoes or, more appropriately for the Cowboy Christmas extravaganza here, between your saddle and your horse.

To demonstrate its effectiveness, Santa wraps his hand in the gel and smashes the bejeezus out of it with the sledge. He does the same with the little candies, and they don't get crushed.

"It's simple physics, is what it is," the Claused one says.

The show is open daily through Saturday and is free to the public. It's in town every December as part of the National Finals Rodeo. Last year, the rodeo brought 170,000 people to town and had a nongaming economic impact of more than $50 million.

Lots of that money is on display at the gift show, where a handcrafted saddle can cost you $7,000 or more. That's true pretty much anywhere, at pretty much any cowboy-type trade show.

What makes this one different?

It's in Las Vegas.

"I was just going to get myself a Bloody Mary," says Liz Cervantes. "This is the only place you can do that."

It is not yet noon, and the longest lines at the gift show are at the cocktail stands.

Cervantes laughs about that. This is one of the reasons she loves Las Vegas. One of the reasons she's been coming to this gift show for eight years now.

She operates a leather goods outfit based in Cathedral City, Calif., called New World Trading.

She started out about 15 years ago handcrafting Native America style plates. She branched out to leather and other goods, eventually building up a business that grosses about $1 million a year.

Normally, she sells only wholesale to other stores. This event is the one time each year that she sells to the public. She says she's done as little as $35,000 in business over the show's 10-day run and as much as $75,000. In the past couple years, with the recession and all, the total has been toward the lower end. She expects the same this year.

So she could survive without being here. But she's here anyway. It's the Bloody Marys, sure, the whole Vegas thing. But it's more than that. It's getting out there and interacting with people. She loves that.

To illustrate, she tells this story.

The other day, the rodeo competition was getting ready to start on the TV in one of the casino bars here in town. Before the event started, someone on TV started singing the national anthem. "Oh say can you see," etc.

Before that first sentence was out, everyone in the bar was standing up.

"That's America right there," Cervantes says.

And she loves that. She loves that the guy in the booth across from her has been hand-making saddles for almost 40 years. That everyone here is so friendly. That it's become it's own little community.

She loves that she gets to meet the people who buy her stuff, rather than the retailers who sell it. She loves, too, that they come intent on spending money.

Even if it is mostly on leather.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.