October 16, 2013|By Miriam Valverde, Sun Sentinel
Guns and fashion shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, Boca Raton entrepreneur Susan Kushlin says. Kushlin loves shooting guns — and loves looking good — and she got tired of leaving gun trade shows empty-handed. She wanted to be able to purchase something feminine to show off that she’s a shooter, but never saw anything to buy.
Susan Kushlin decided to take matters into her own hands.
She created Gun Girls, Inc., a fashion line offering an array of apparel and accessories designed exclusively for women. Her assortment includes $35 gold-toned bullet belts, $20 dangling gun earrings, $76 pink concealed-carry handbags and $21 rhinestone-studded tank tops bearing her company logo, a gun in a holster belt.
“There’s always things for guys. They can find anything they want there (at gun shows), anything from parts to shirts,” Kushlin said. “They have women’s things, but in my opinion they’re men’s shirts with women’s logos.
“It’s not the same thing.”
Kushlin’s Gun Girls collection is for sale now at Gun World of South Florida in Deerfield Beach, K&W Gun Works in Delray Beach and Okeechobee Shooting Sports in Okeechobee.
The number of women participating in shooting and hunting sports has grown significantly in recent years, said Bill Brassard Jr., spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Businesses are taking notice.
“Companies are responding to the marketplace,” Brassard said. “Existing companies are adding product lines specifically for women and new companies have launched.”
The foundation released a survey in August pointing out that the “face of America’s target shooters is changing.” New target shooters, classified as those who have taken up the sport in the past five years, are younger, female and urban compared to those who have been shooting for more than five years, the NSSF survey found.