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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
America’s Boots, with Tate Doolittle
Curious about the life behind the design of top-quality boots and the rugged lifestyles that demand them? Join us as we sit down with Tate Doolittle, the Director of Business Development at Nicks Handmade Boots, for a fun conversation about leather, and craftsmanship.
This episode celebrates the heritage of boot-making and the satisfaction of owning durable, high-quality footwear. We'll explore the process of crafting boots that can withstand the toughest conditions, and the functional benefits of owning high quality boots.
Find more about NICKS BOOTS, YOUTUBE, and INSTAGRAM.
Send Tate a message at tate@nicksboots.com
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
This starts in the early 1900s, as the Pacific Northwest is built on the back of logging. So we are building boots. I assure you that no timber cruiser got on his horse and brought two pairs of boots. He brought one and a cobbler made that pair for him.
Speaker 2:These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast For those of you out there that are truck guys like me. I want to talk to you about one of our newest sponsors, dect. If you don't know DECT? They make bomb-proof drawer systems to keep your gear organized and safely locked away in the back of your truck. Clothes, rifles, packs, kill kits can all get organized and at the ready so you don't get to your hunting spot and waste time trying to find stuff. We all know that guy. Don't be that guy.
Speaker 2:They also have a line of storage cases that fit perfectly in the drawers. We use them for organizing ammunition, knives, glassing equipment, extra clothing and camping stuff. Knives, glassing equipment, extra clothing and camping stuff. You can get a two-drawer system for all dimensions of full-size truck beds or a single-drawer system that fits mid-size truck beds and maybe, best of all, they're all made in the USA. So get decked and get after it. Check them out at deckedcom. Shipping is always free, mr Tate Doolittle. Doolittle is a great name. Did you have fun with that name growing up?
Speaker 1:I do. You know, my dad is a doctor, he's a dentist, and so no, kidding yeah. The Dr Doolittle thing you know from an early age was always there. It is funny. The Dr Dolittle thing you know from an early age was always there. It is funny. One of the things I observed is everyone assumes that they're the first one who's dropped the joke. Sure, like you're at the grocery store, like the doctor, like the dentist, yeah. Or I mean like the veterinarian? Yeah, not exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a buddy named Norm and you know growing up with and he's an older guy and growing up with Cheers, it was like so brutal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so brutal for that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?
Speaker 1:I am Tate Doolittle. I am the Director of Business Development at Nick's Boots We'll talk more about that today and live outside of Seattle, currently Been there for about 10 years. Enjoy it out there, but also spend a good chunk of time down here in your neck of the woods. Since I married my amazing wife and she brought me down to this beautiful place, and you know, I always thought I'd lived in Bozeman for a chunk of time and I always thought I was headed back that direction. But boy, this reminds me of Bozeman a long time ago. So it's been really fun to be down here.
Speaker 2:Oh God, that scares me. I know that's an ugly thing to say.
Speaker 1:I know, as it was coming out of my mouth, I was like, don't say it on the podcast man.
Speaker 2:Well, we've got some differences here that are helping protect us, but that are helping protect us. But yeah, poor Bozeman, it's definitely a place that was you don't have I-90.
Speaker 1:That's the thing that I always come back to when I was there. So I lived in Belgrade, next little town out, and boy, I felt like I was out there. And then if you went to Manhattan, the next town over, I mean you're going to pack a lunch. You know, because it's so far Now those are just suburbs of Bozeman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we have miserably tough winters that aren't good for recreation, and that's a huge distinction. And the media stays in Montana. Right, the river runs through a Yellowstone. All that malarkey.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Just the Kool-Aid that people drink. That stays in Montana right it's really unfortunate for the Montanans that that's happened, but it's it's good for us that hasn't happened here yeah, you know one of the things that drew me to it when I moved there.
Speaker 1:So I grew up in Colorado Springs great place to grow up and then I moved to Bozeman with kind of all that allure and I loved that it was a college town, but then there's flatbed trucks ripping around. You know it's ranching, I was working construction. You know it had a little bit of everything and now when I go back, just those ratios are so different. Um, it's still a great place. I still have a lot of friends there and love going back to visit. But boy, it's, it's. It's changed a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, you're working construction where you go into college.
Speaker 1:I was actually playing hockey. It's a lot of fun. Um, some of the best years of my life, between high school and college, I played hockey there. Um, you know you talk about outdoor recreation in the winter, winter's air, cold, you know. And they got this team and built just a beautiful rink, um, and people came out. It was a lot of fun, you know. They'd come have a few beers and watch some young kids who were trying to make it to the next level. So we had just an absolute blast there and for some reason we're one of the best teams in the country at the time. So those couple years were an absolute blast.
Speaker 1:I will also say, as happens in small towns, things change, ownership changed and I went from playing at the rink beautiful rink, I mean, just absolutely fantastic, one of the best in the country at the time, small but done really well to finishing up my construction job by tearing down the rink. Um, we basically took the entire inside out of the rink and it was bought by InBev as a distribution facility because it was a big giant building with a huge refrigeration system. So it was, uh, I remember my roommate and I, a guy who'd grown up in rural Alaska and a hunting buddy of mine and just kind of looking at each other as we just destroyed the locker room and training room and just going through there like what have we done? But you know, it evolves yeah, is it.
Speaker 2:Uh, is it ironic that as a hockey player, you had a dentist for a dad? It really is or was it helpful?
Speaker 1:no, I mean it was funny. So growing up, uh, I mean, I think every single one of my friends has been stitched up by my dad at some point, and it did not stop at the mouth. My dad actually was a dentist for a college hockey team in Colorado Springs, which was fun because he grew up in Mississippi.
Speaker 1:I mean couldn't be further from where I have ended up in life. So he had done a lot of the facial trauma still does it for Colorado College and that's what got me into the game. And then he puts all my friends back together and there's this thing that happens when you turn 18 you can wear a half shield. And so you've gone from the full cage uh, the bird cage, as we like to call it to, uh, to the halfer. And you know my dad's a dentist. To this point, save a few stitches, I've I've managed to avoid any major issues. And one of the assistant coaches on the college team told my dad, like he's going to go play in the big leagues he cannot wear I mean not the big leagues, but you get it, if he wears a birdcage out there he's going to get more hurt than wearing a half shield.
Speaker 1:So I threw the half shield on, played two years, got a few bumps and bruises. You know no big deal put back together. And then I'm getting ready to go to college and I'm training with a bunch of guys trying to get ready, just do anything to get ice time. So I would play at lunch with a bunch of guys at down at CC and it was a combination of professors to players, to local guys coming back, but it was probably the lowest skill level skate I was participating in but it's ice time, so you take it. And as soon as I step on the ice, there's just tommy try hard out there and he's not been playing the game for very long and I said to him bud, you got to keep that, stick down or you're gonna hurt somebody. Not 15 minutes later I'm looking for my teeth on the ice and this is about three weeks before I go to college.
Speaker 1:So I take a stick in the face, knock my forefront teeth out, basically, and find what I can and drive to my dad's office that's a few blocks away and then I get to go to college basically with braces on. So that was my party trick for shoot 10 more years when I was still playing to some degree. You just don't get those things fixed till you're done. So sorry if my mom hears this, but after two beers the flipper was coming out and people were going to laugh. Yeah. So you know, first job trying to make it in the real world, and occasionally I had a toothless smile so funny as a dentist. But he told me when he put me back together you know, at least it in the real world. And occasionally I had a toothless smile so funny as a dentist. But he told me when he put me back together you know, at least it wasn't your eye Like I can put teeth back together, yeah sure, yeah, just 3D print them and a little glue and bang it in there and you're good, right?
Speaker 2:I?
Speaker 1:mean to this day, I'm still wearing temporaries that were put in one Thanksgiving in my tiny little apartment in Seattle, dad's leaving on a flight the next morning. We've had a little bit of whiskey and it's like, oh boy, we got to put those teeth in. So, super glue and some, some teeth in. Here I am a few years later, so how did you escape?
Speaker 2:uh, not talking like a hockey player, or or does that show up sometimes?
Speaker 1:I asked, asked my wife if I have uh. I sometimes forget that our domicile is not the locker room. But boy, it is funny, you can slip back into it, you get with some players and when I play more often you pick up this weird accent and all these stupid things that you say. But great, great guys, Super fun community and learned a lot there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, super fun community and learned a lot there. But yeah, yeah, uh, I I give kevin miller a hard time because he grew up in, like southern california and he sounds like he grew up in saskatoon, saskatchewan yeah I was like what's the deal with that? He's like man, I just had um so many canadian roommates. Yeah, like, this is just how I learned to talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah you know it's funny, my I mentioned both my parents. They're from southern mississippi. I mean, it's y'all at our house. They still have strong southern accents. Then I play all this hockey in the north and that kind of creeps in and I've had multiple people be like where are you from? Like what, what are you? Where did this come from? And then I throw in stupid. You know the little things that you say in the locker room. The other day my wife asked how something was going. I said give her nails.
Speaker 2:She's like what does that mean? I'm like, honestly, I have no idea what give her nails means. I'm not completely sure. Yeah, but this is the time that you're supposed to say it Max effort, I think but give her nails.
Speaker 1:What leather goods are used in hockey these days? Next to nothing, Really. The palms of gloves.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're a disposable item, more or less. So there's a little bit of leather there. But it is cool, man. You look at the history. Not that long ago, helmets were leather gloves. Even when I started, premium gloves were still all leather and skates were. I mean I look now in the boot business. Building a boot is not that different from the skates. I started in and thinking about how you use different leathers and thicknesses and all of that, and I distinctly remember when that changed. It's almost like they jumped from work boots to ski boots and we got into all these composites. And now I mean I bought a pair of skates a few years ago and they basically 3d scan and print your foot and build a boot around it. It's it's just mind blowing. But interesting to watch that transition, because when it first started, guys were breaking skates I mean they were brittle and all kinds of weird things. So definitely an evolution. That's happened in the game there, but you don't. You don't see much leather there anymore. Interesting, yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about leather.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Leather is is a fascinating thing, and for me there are, there are almost foreseeably there. There are always going to be things that cannot be beat by some of these natural materials, by some of these natural materials. Look at what can be done with bamboo, with cotton, with wool. The properties, the molecular properties of these materials cannot be replaced. They can be substituted for by things that are a lot cheaper and usually you can trace those back to some type of fossil fuel.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 1:But leather is something that, in a lot of ways, is truly inimitable, and I want to get into, like what leather is and what makes it so enduring. Yeah, you had mentioned yesterday when I chatted with you that we were going to talk about leather today and I spent some time thinking about it last night. I was out walking the dog and just enjoying a good evening and I was thinking, you know, leather probably showed up right after a pointy stick. You know, when you think about how far back this thing goes and kind of what it does today, but what did it do back then? Somebody killed something.
Speaker 1:They utilized everything and that leather was critical for holding water, holding other things they needed. They were transient. You know, I think about that. That. Where it started, clothing yeah, we landed on one of the perfect materials from day one. That's a byproduct and that's something I want to get into on one of the perfect materials from day one. That's a byproduct and that's something I want to get into is kind of where it comes from, but I hadn't really thought about it in that context until I thought about it last night. This is likely one of the most primitive things that we've ever used and while there's technology and a lot of technology involved in it today, it is still the outside covering of a cow.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, or, or, or some other animal right.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, it's uh, it's the largest organ of, of a mammal, Um, and probably I would say of reptiles, amphibians, you know, kind of go down the list, but with a moose. I was doing a bunch of uh bunch of research on moose a few years ago for a film we're making, and a moose's skin is going to be just over seven percent of its body weight. Okay, that's amazing yeah that is amazing.
Speaker 2:That's a lot. You know you're taking an 1800 pound animal and 7% of that is going to be just the stuff that's on the outside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wild, it's incredible. How do you think the moose compares to the elk? You hear that moose are maybe a little less tough. Is any of that related to the outer skin or is that what's happening on the inside?
Speaker 2:I don't know that moose are less tough than elk. Uh, I think that moose lend themselves to to being killed by hunters a little bit more easily because of their shape, okay, and their size. So they're, they're. It's a big kill zone.
Speaker 2:It's big, tall and wide, so there's less to miss right there, yeah. But people also think that moose are bigger than what they are, especially the shiris moose. We've had the opportunity to weigh a few of them and they're just over 1,000 pounds typically, and that's the weight that people think the elk are, right, whereas most of these elk are seven to eight hundred pounds, which is a heck of a big animal. But moose are quite a bit taller, which they just evolved, one for snow and two for for wading, so that they could cross, you know, lakes and rivers a little bit more easily without having to swim, because I know walking is is easier than swimming, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, off topic here, but I did an Alaskan moose hunt actually with my roommate from Montana a few years ago a native, a guy born in Alaska and the other thing that really struck me, having hunted in the west, is you're shooting at a much shorter distance. I mean we're using a 270 and a hundred yard shot as as as far as I could see, so very, very different bees for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Um, when I uh, got my moose because I'd done all this research I learned that the best place to cut moccasins out of a moose were in their lower legs, right at the hawk. Okay, so where there's that natural bend in their lower leg, um, that is a perfect place to put your heel. So, rather than trying to form leather to be a shape, go to the part of the animal that's already that shape and then go to the part of the animal that is built for waiting, and it's going to be the most waterproof leather on the whole animal.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:So I've still got those in my freezer because I'm a scumbag and, you know, sometimes my hopes and dreams are bigger than my realities. I know that. But yeah, I could still work on that at some point, because it's leather and it'll be there waiting for me. That's right, yeah, okay, so we, we've determined that leather is the skin skin of an animal and for for the purposes that we're talking about today, we're mostly going to talk about leather from cattle.
Speaker 1:For the most part yeah. The vast majority of what we do is going to be in cattle. Buffalo is also an interesting one we should talk about for a minute. So, certainly, I'd say buffalo and horse are the two materials that find their way into workwear and fashion and things like that, but for the vast majority it's going to be from cattle.
Speaker 2:You might have just shocked some people that they might have horse leather goods in their lives.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is funny to see Horse has a very distinct look to it. People love it. It's got a feel you love it or you hate it, but people that love it. You talk about where it comes from. It's almost always from the rump. It's from a very specific place. Now, most of it doesn't come from the US, though you can get it. But yeah, it's a whole other beast that I know a little bit less about than cows, but I don't think people realize that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And if they've had sausage in Europe, they've probably had horse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know we get emotional attachments as some of these animals and it can be off-putting, but the reality is you know, the West was very much made on people eating horse meat. Yep, long before cattle, long before cattle, long before cattle. And some of the best horsemen here up until not that long ago, a few decades ago, ate a lot of horse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:And that's just the reality of the thing. What are some properties that leather has?
Speaker 1:So leather has. It's a very dynamic material. So a couple of things you've mentioned already kind of triggered thoughts in my head. One of them is the location that we're using and so on. The animal. You know people may not realize in the in the example you gave with a moose, that leather on the hawk is not going to look anything like the belly or the back. There's different thicknesses, there's different textures, to your point, some has better waterproofing. The fash underneath it kind of affects what happens on the outside in the same way that the hair on the outside affects the inside. So one thing we battle is probably a strong word, but something we have to be really cognizant of is this is a material that changes with the season.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So for us, you know, I think one of the things I notice in our business process that is one of the most challenging things to work around is I'm not buying Cordura, I'm not buying nylon, I'm not buying a synthetic material with a fossil fuel base. That's a lot more predictable if I'm buying something like that, even cotton. You know we have enough supply that we can keep it very consistent With leather. We pride ourselves on how picky we are with our leather. Our yield is going to be significantly lower than certainly any mass-produced brands and we know it to be even lower than our other competitors in the Pacific Northwest. We've chosen to be incredibly particular about what we use and where we use it. So an upper is not the same as the vamp, is not the same as other components of the boot, which we probably won't get into in depth today. But we have to choose that leather very specifically.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that is really really neat about our industry is this is a multi-generational knowledge that is passed down. So one of our cutters now his father was our cutter before and we've brought cutters on now with the expectation that they're going to learn this process. They didn't come in and you know we click it all out. On dyes, it's a neat process that you've seen. But the process is not slap as many dyes on this hide as you possibly can and see what happens.
Speaker 1:We've got to think about the grain, you know. So I come at one point from a bit of a woodworking background and that's been something that's similar as well leather as a grain. If we cut the leather in one direction for one part of your boot and then on the other boot we cut it in the opposite direction, you're going to get a different feel, durability break in over time. So you know, to your original question, one of the properties it has a grain, it has a thickness, so it doesn't come off the animal. You know perfectly. You know three millimeters thick or whatever it is is.
Speaker 2:It's not a sheet that's being laminated into plywood.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, we, we have to. The tanneries do a lot of this work for us. But even to some degree we have to thin components of it out and and things like that. Again, it's just so much thicker than any other very consistent, um synthetic material that we get in that there's a ton of craftsmanship in the whole process. But but to me it was really impressive to realize that that starts at cutting. If we don't get cutting right, we're wasting a whole lot of time, effort and energy to get to the end and say this isn't going to meet our standards and we start over.
Speaker 2:And my understanding is that that machine that thins leather down to make it an even thickness there's only a handful of those in the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean all the machinery. We could have a whole podcast talking about machinery. So a lot of the machinery we're using is legitimately 100 years old and we buy these machines every single opportunity that we get, along with all of our competitors. You know there's a bidding war on all these things and certainly there are new companies developing these, but the demand is not as high.
Speaker 1:You know, there's more people investing in laser cutting for synthetics than there are people investing in skiving machines for leather. So 95% of that is done in the tannery and they've got incredible processes to give us the most consistent product. That's the other thing that's interesting to think about that. It doesn't come to us consistent and someone who's been doing this for 100 years their entire goal is to send me consistency when it shows up at our shop.
Speaker 2:So I'll talk about the first part of this process a little bit, which is raising cattle. Cattle get raised in what's called a cow-calf operation. So that's going to be a ranch or something similar that has a bunch of female cattle and a couple bulls and at a specific time of year they're going to put the bulls in with the cows. Those cows are going to get bred. Sometimes they use artificial insemination, but for the most part we're going to put the bulls in with the cows. Cows get bred Later on. Cow has a calf.
Speaker 2:We raise that calf initially on milk here on the sixth ranch. It's going to be on grass after that and then, when it's old enough, we are going to send that animal to a facility that is USDA inspected. Those animals are going to get killed and they're going to get skinned and gutted and cut and wrapped for beef. We're going to harvest bones. We're going to harvest organs. At times we're going to keep that skull and we're going to sell that skull. We used to be able to offset the price of that butchering fee with the hide of the animal. Now there are so few tanneries that are left in the United States that we actually have to pay in addition to have that hide thrown away.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And there are probably over 100,000 hides in the US that get thrown away every single day.
Speaker 2:Now tanneries are under a lot of restriction because it is a chemical process to tan hides and we need to be cognizant of how those chemicals are being treated and cleaned, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:But it's a great shame to me that we're not able to utilize this material more fully and more often. So the hides that do come to these tanneries in the US, these hundred-year-old facilities, which you know there's not a lot of left left. Those are primarily cattle that are raised here in america. A few of them are raised in canada, but they're tanned here in america, and then the best of those are going to go to nick's boots and you guys are then going to select the best portions of those hides to turn into boots. All of this is going to result in something that lasts for a very long time, a very, very long time, and we'll get into that more later. But once that hide, that tanned hide, gets to you and you select it down and and get it graded out the way you want it, what happens next to to that leather before it becomes a boot?
Speaker 1:Can we put a pen in that and come back to that, Because you you skipped over a process that I think for me what did I miss?
Speaker 1:the tanning process and so the piece I wanted to hit there and I think this was really fun when I walked through the factory with you, you know you just explained how we got it to a hide that came out of a meat processing facility. Now that hide shows up at a tannery you mentioned. There's not many, we work with four to five and certainly those are the biggest and even there's probably some consolidation within that of who's driving the most volume. So I was just recently at a tannery and in Milwaukee, Seidel Leather, great partner of ours, who makes a lot of great leather for us, and I saw that leather coming in from the processing plant.
Speaker 1:And when it comes in. They do chrome tanning, so we'll talk about chrome and vegetable tanning are two different processes, so they're a chrome tannery. They're getting that in in what are called blue hides and they're blue because it's been bleached and that has happened quickly.
Speaker 1:So when this comes off the animal, the same way that we care about meat care and hunting and in food production, they have to take care of that hide as well, which is where some of the cost comes through. A chrome tanning is a chromium salt that is used to preserve not too far from how we preserve food though very different chemical that's used there. But then it comes in as a blue hide and and we could have a whole podcast talking about what happens after that. But to me, most everyone starts at the next step, which is once it's in the tannery and they're putting it through essentially gigantic washing machines adding all kinds of leather oils and waxes and things like that. But to me, it really struck me to see this come in on pallets of wet hot. That's just what it is and that's where they start the thinning process and getting more consistency. The other thing we haven't talked about is a cow is not flat and so those come in with all kinds of curve to them. So the thickness and all of that they spend a lot of time before they ever do anything cool with the leather making it usable. So in that process. I'll briefly speak to that, but it shows up now. We've got it ready to go through the process and then that really starts with us.
Speaker 1:So what are we looking for in a leather? That's the fun thing with Seidel's Wicket and Craig Horween Law Tanning. All these guys want to know what we want, and ultimately we want to know what you want. So, part of what you're talking about, why are a hundred thousand hides, or whatever the number is, not being utilized? It's a simple supply and demand question, and so the demand here in my mind is one do we have a demand for leather goods? That's one piece of it. And then do we have a demand for leather goods made in America? That's the other piece. There's a whole piece of this we're not talking about, which is leather tanned in other places, built in other places and shipped into our country. So if we just focus on what happens in America, they want to know what I want.
Speaker 1:So what qualities do I want in a boot? I mean, right now we've got leather optimized for support. We've got leather optimized for waterproofness. We've got leather optimized for aesthetic. All of that starts with what hide they're selecting, and then what are we going to put into it. How many processes does it go through? How much wax do we add? How finished do we want it versus how rough do we want it? And those guys even do stamping and replication of exotics and things like that. We don't do a whole lot of that in our business, but they can take something all the way through ultimately to what that final user and the manufacturer is going to utilize. So a ton of credit to those guys. We could not do what we do if we didn't have that.
Speaker 2:Well, now you got me interested, so I think at some point I'm going to need to fly out to one of these facilities and do a show on the tanning process, just so that we can really get into that, because we frankly don't have the time to cover it all today.
Speaker 1:I would love that. I mean the one thing I'll say and then we'll move on to what we do with the leather. Seidel's in Milwaukee. I went there recently and we're looking at the vats that they're tumbling this through. So imagine probably a 10, 12 foot tall container that this leather is going to go in. They're going to put 40, 50 hides in there at a time and tumble it in the chemicals that we want. They were showing me one of their new vats that's 50, 60 years old. These are made out of wood. They're running on these giant belts that now have cages over them because OSHA has required that. But I mean just unbelievable the history there. And then the biggest byproduct of this thing is water. So they've got to be right on a river. They have their own water filtration facility. And that's not just Sidell's. You can't have a tannery without that.
Speaker 1:So, you and I can't go set up a tannery in Wallowa County because we don't have the resources that it requires. So that region is specialized in building leather. It's primarily in the upper Midwest and New England area, and then you know the Pacific Northwest. We take those products and we turn them in into boots.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, so are we back to our pin.
Speaker 1:We're back to our pins, we're back to boots. So we've got these leathers in and we need to make boots out of them. So when we're going to these tanneries, we're picking more leathers and colors and and variation than ever even makes it to market. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to make a bunch of those things into a bunch of different boots different colors, different properties, different thickness and we have to decide and we really utilize our customers a lot. We have very active community out there on Reddit, facebook, instagram, anywhere, podcast. We want to know what people want. So we figure out what all those different boots are going to look like and then we start making our selections and some of those are going to run with us forever. We've got, you know, 64. Double shot is a core leather of ours. 1964 brown is a core leather. Max support shackleton's our new water resistant leather. These are leathers that we believe in and are going to be here for a really long time. But we also pull in fun stuff and we say, hey, we're going to do 150 boots out of this crazy marigold, yellow, orange boot that's going to change color over time. So we're trying to make sure that we've protected the core and we've got that boot for everyone, but then we have a lot of fun with it as well. So that's kind of how we're thinking about what we're merchandising, what we're bringing to market.
Speaker 1:How does that get made into boots? So that leather comes in in rolls, we unpack it, we put it up on pallet racking. You've been through the facility. The smell is just fantastic. It's wonderful. It really is there's. There's nothing better. So it smells amazing in there.
Speaker 1:We've got all this leather in there and then we've got to figure out how to make it into boots. That I should go through and figure out how many steps are involved, but we are. We talked about cutting already. So someone's made an order. We're going to cut it from there. It's going to go to sewers. So sewers it's exactly what you would imagine. It is someone sitting behind a sewing machine and without getting too in the weeds, we can't put two thick pieces of leather next to each other and sew it. So someone, before it even gets sewn, has to go through and thin those edges, make sure we're ready to get that boot sewn together, and then these skilled sewers who've been doing this forever. This is not a job that we put up a rack and someone shows up and we hand them a sewing machine and they get after it. These folks know what they're doing and they've been doing it for a really, really long time.
Speaker 2:The gal I talked to had been there for 18 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean multi-generational, this whole industry, a lot of European influence and employees that have come that have brought their whole families and we've got fathers and sons and mothers and daughters that are working here and even that is very unique to our business. So we will get sewers that come in that were sewing synthetics for a major sportswear brand and at the end of their first couple of weeks their hands are just wrecked. It's a really hard process to learn and credit to our team. Most everyone sticks it out and figures it out because the product on the other side is a lot of fun, but they work really, really hard to sew those boots and and these machines are not like your grandma's sewing machine no they like.
Speaker 2:They look like something that would be sending spikes into a railroad bed yes, they're machinery.
Speaker 1:They're not sewing machines, you know they are. And even that I mean shoot. There's so many things we could talk about, just the maintenance of these machines and making sure they operate. I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, zen in the art of sewing machine maintenance.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. We have a graveyard of machines and it when a machine breaks inside of this cast iron box. You need someone who knows this thing happened. So I need to go look here.
Speaker 2:Right, because it looks more like an engine block than anything else.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that's not just our sewing machines, it's all kinds of different machines that we have to use and we'll talk about the different types of sewing here in just a moment. But we have to be able to fix those machines, know where we have to go inside that machine and someone needs to go procure that part out of the graveyard, place it in there We've got oil machines. That's a huge piece of what we do. Place it in there. We've got oil machines. That's a huge piece of what we do.
Speaker 1:We have to keep the operation running. Yeah, because if any one of these things breaks down along the way, it is heavily consequential for us you know, we simply don't have the option to sit around for three days while a sole stitching machine is down it's just not an option.
Speaker 1:So we've got this boot sewn. And before we move on from sewing the which is sometimes the bane of my existence when it comes to Reddit fantastic community out there, but these people look at these things with such a high attention to detail. I think about it a little bit. It's kind of like the custom gun world or the custom knife world. Good enough is not good enough. So for us, if someone doesn't in the stitch line in the right place and so there's two holes that are a little too close to one another, we're going to send that back. If the spacing isn't correct, we're going to send that back. If they didn't have things lined up to start and they don't end in the same spot, we're going to send that back.
Speaker 1:So that process is critically important to how the whole operation works. So we've got this upper zone. Keep in mind this is also not flat. So we've had to make a three-dimensional object out of an organic material. Then we're going to start the lasting process, and the lasting process could be 10 podcasts in itself. But this is how do we make this fit your foot?
Speaker 2:What is a last?
Speaker 1:A last is a mold, essentially of a foot. It's not custom to your foot necessarily, but a 9D is different than a 9E, which is different from an 8.5F. So we have walls and walls and walls of lasts and it's not just one last last. So the boots I'm wearing today are built ona packer last. That's, that's one whole size set we have to have. Then we have a 67, which is going to be our highest arch support, a 55, an h and w, a thurman, which is going to be very similar to a 55, but with a little bit more anatomical shape to allow some more toe splay. Every single one of those. You just think about how many lasts we have to have, because we have to have multiple sizes across all of those products and we are covering a gigantic size range. I mean, for the vast majority of folks we've got a last that's going to fit you.
Speaker 2:And the human foot is a remarkable thing A quarter of the bones in our body are in our feet.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, it is the foundation of our movement, of our ability to navigate the world. It starts with our dang feet. It is, and if you don't have them properly supported and protected, then you can have giant problems. Supported and protected, then you you can have giant problems. Every hunter, every, every craftsman, every tradesman, everybody who works physically, knows that if their boots fail, that they fail. So, just like you're talking about a machine going down and that stopping the entire process, if your boots let you down, you're done, you're done. So it can't happen. It's a point of zero failure.
Speaker 2:And I ran a survey on Instagram a while ago asking what people brought spares of on a hunt, and the most common thing that they brought spares of was boots. And that's horrifying to me, and it the reason that it's horrifying to me is because that means that they have an expectation of failure. So their most critical piece of gear, the thing that if, if this goes down, it ruins everything. Right, and there's a handful of those in a hunt, for sure, but they, but they're not just getting the right thing to start with. That isn't going to fail. They're. And imported products. We expect some level of failure.
Speaker 1:And sometimes that's a compromise. I understand that Sometimes we want to optimize to lightweight. When we optimize to lightweight in a rifle, we know that that is going to impact accuracy.
Speaker 2:There's no free lunch.
Speaker 1:Comfort to shoot All of these things. There is no free lunch at the end of the day. So for us, I think about our history. So this is our 60th anniversary. We're super proud of that.
Speaker 1:Nix was founded in 1964, but this starts before 1964. This starts in the early 1900s, as the Pacific Northwest is built on the back of logging. So we are building boots. I assure you that no timber cruiser got on his horse and brought two pairs of boots. He brought one and a cobbler made that pair for him and he made it with the intention that this boot was going to last him essentially a lifetime, or certainly through his next trip and 100 after that.
Speaker 1:So we've built boots more or less in the same way. We'll get back to the process in a minute but we've built boots more or less the same way since the early 1900s. And that comes, I think, if you. You don't have to rewind history too far to see that this was for loggers and firefighters. So when I think about how do boots like we make relate to a hunter today, I think about the wildland firefighters that are out there. It is smoky and hot today in Wallowa County and we know that there are firefighters out there all day relying on their boots, and I want to talk about that for a second.
Speaker 2:I fought fire all the way through college and you know it was a really formative and important time in my life and I've still got great friends from those fire crews that I was on. Those are enduring relationships, largely because of the stress that you're under while doing that job. As we are talking, there are over half a million acres burning in the state of Oregon. That's more than two Connecticut's right, and along those are thousands of firefighters who are hiking into this extremely steep, rugged, remote country and they're wearing this style of boot and they're going to be standing in fire. They're going to be cutting trees that are on fire with chainsaws. Well, you know they might be standing in conditions that you know are too hot for um, while they're doing that and you know you want to talk about zero failure I was on a fire, uh, up in Hell's Canyon one time and the forest service had just shifted policies to allow for, uh, for a more modern, uh, like hiking style of boot.
Speaker 2:And uh and a lot of people were really suspicious of it, and I was watching this this mammoth of a guy um cut down a, a great big tree that was on fire and he was standing standing in fire in order to do it. And he started doing the lizard foot thing, where he would stand on one foot and then the other, and then the other, and as this tree finally just started to tip, he turned around and he threw the chainsaw and as he turned to step out of it, his soul had completely delaminated and it scooped that incredibly hot, boiling dirt and ash up into his foot and it torched the bottom of his feet and both of his boots were failed the bottom of his feet and both of his boots were failed. Now, if this is a guy with burned feet at the top of Hell's Canyon, what is he going to do? What he did was he sat there until a pair of Nick's boots were flown into him and then he put his burned feet into those boots so that he could get off the mountain.
Speaker 1:Right. And the other thing I would add to that is is you're talking about an environment that someone may be sitting here saying, well, james, I'm not cutting down a tree in the middle of the forest and boiling dirt, but many of those guys got there by walking. So for us, we go on a hike and it's seven or eight miles. That's a good day For a wildland firefighter to go. Put down 25, 30 miles with more weight than anyone typically carries on. A hike is just. That's Monday. And then they're going to do it on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Speaker 1:And so for me I've even thought about that in the way that I think about hunting. I made a comment to you one time early on where I said, yeah, maybe I wouldn't take a Knicks boot to the bottom of Hell's Canyon, kind of totally changed my tune on that because I was optimizing to something that was lightweight but, to your point, had a chance of failure. And once I've started talking to wildland firefighters and loggers and other trades construction you know the fact that people rely on their boots you realize why wouldn't I? And to get back to the boots and the materials and how they all work together, and even the last in construction you talk about the sole. So the sole in that boot that he was wearing is some form of rubber, some petroleum product that is sewn onto the bottom and that becomes kind of the weak point, whether it's that spot that it was sewn or the material that's made out of. That's your weak point For us.
Speaker 1:When you're standing in a 67 last. So if you're going to go buy a hotshot, you're a wildland firefighter. You're going to go buy a hotshot, that's a full NFPA rated boot, fireproof threads, and then you're standing on multiple layers of leather. So when we get that arch support. So if you were to go buy that boot and put it on, I promise you it's going to feel unusual. It is. You're not slipping your foot into your tennis shoe. You're going to feel something under your foot and the break-in process is a very real thing in Pacific Northwest boots. We know that. But what's on the other side of the break-in process is four or five pieces of leather that were all strategically placed in there according to the shape of your foot is organically going to get warm and wet and all the things that happen inside of a shoe and mold exactly to your foot.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So what do people get when they go buy an orthotic? They went and they got a mold of their foot and some silicone or whatever it is injected in so that it fits exactly. That's one way to do it. We get there by using a natural material that changes and adapts with you over time.
Speaker 2:A natural, renewable, sustainable material. Correct.
Speaker 1:And also that is fireproof in all of these things that we need. But it extends so far past wildland firefighting. I guess the reason I bring it up is if it works for them, why doesn't it work for me? Why doesn't it work for the next guy?
Speaker 2:You know, I learned an interesting thing about the old school loggers from my dad, who's an old school logger thing about the old school loggers from my dad, who's an old school logger. And there there was debate um in like two different companies of boots um at the time, and a lot of the guys, uh, you know that they went with nicks. They all complained that it took longer to break those boots in and, uh, and that's a, that's a reality. But once they were broken in, they also lasted longer, right, um, which is a big deal. If you're going to make a purchase like that, you want it to to last. You know, you want to put that boot in your will and you're able to do that. The crazy thing that I learned, especially on the west side, a lot of those guys went barefoot inside their boots yeah, yeah People.
Speaker 2:So you want to talk about a custom fit Like that's. That's a boot that got so well molded to your feet that you're not going to wear socks inside of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's what they did and in those super wet climates where they're, you know hiking up and down these hillsides and walking on trees and you know doing all this hardcore labor, that was how they rolled and I can see it. You know, I never thought about it before, but I can totally see that Once you've got that boot broken, yeah, you can absolutely get away with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and the thing I will say as well Pacific Northwest boots. We're not the only guys that build them, and it all was born out of this heritage, I think, where I'm really proud of our team. So we are 100% American made and not just American made. We're made in one facility. You saw it. We get raw leather that comes in. We get boots that come out.
Speaker 1:On the other side, we have fantastic people that answer the phones, answer email, answer your questions on the internet. Wherever you choose to be on the internet, what you see is what you get with us. From a product standpoint, we have maintained the standard that we had 60 years ago, so our leathers are still the same weight that they were when your dad bought a boot. In order to be competitive in a very challenging sales environment, sometimes you have to make compromises and I just really commend Steve and Shiler, the owners of our company, for deciding that. That's not who we're going to be. We're going to build the boot the right way and the way that we've done it for 60 years, so that we're true to that heritage.
Speaker 2:How long does it take to break in a pair of Knicks boots?
Speaker 1:This is heavily dependent on your usage and a little bit your model. We should talk at some point about kind of the variety of models that people get into. But let's say you're going to buy a 55 or 67 last all leather work boot and you're a construction guy. If you're putting this on Monday through Friday by the end of your first month you're going to be fine. I would say at two and a half to three weeks you're going to start feeling fine. Your first week probably isn't going to be that fun.
Speaker 1:Now there's a couple ways that folks approach that. One way is wear them for two hours and then take them off. No different than hunting boots. How do you break in a new boot? Wear them for a couple hours, take them off, put your old trusty boots on, do it again. I'm of the mindset. You put it on, you put it to work. It's a little bit uncomfortable, but you know it's on the other side. Just so that that break in process is not three months, I want to get in the boot and get it as comfortable as quickly as I can.
Speaker 2:Seems like I remember a hundred hours on your website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's fair.
Speaker 2:Okay, and here's why I want to bring it up, let's take an average walking pace about two and a half miles an hour, right? So by the time these boots are broken, somebody's walked, let's say, 250 miles. All right. Now I wrote this article a couple of years ago on on modern hunting boots and what I realized, after talking to a bunch of people who are really good at collecting data, is that a lot of modern modern hunting boots last about 400 miles and they also cost about $400. So what I was realizing is that people were spending a dollar per mile on their boots and they were accepting that every couple of years they're going to have to buy a new pair. Look, by the time these things are broken, like, your other boot is halfway dead, 100% it's having its midlife crisis?
Speaker 1:It is, yeah, and here's the thing I would add to that is also, I don't even know how many miles or how many hours you can get in your in one of our boots. It totally depends on how you're utilizing it. But for a hot shot, so this is someone who's wearing it all summer, all day, every day, for 20 hours a day in a really harsh environment. They're going to get about two seasons out of a boot, but when I say get two seasons out of a boot, that's two seasons before they send it back to me and I rebuild it.
Speaker 1:Right, so what do, I do, I pull, I don't, but someone pulls the boot apart and we completely reconstruct the bottom half of the boot. I mean, it's really the best value in boots in my mind. The upfront investment is massive, but for a couple hundred bucks you're going to come back and everything really below the ankle is going to get replaced. So that's a new sole, new stitching, all the midsole. So everything you broke in, even though you're losing that break in that you already had, you're essentially getting a new boot. At this point, I think that is something that in our culture is not valued enough, but for the people that do value it, it's huge.
Speaker 1:Just this morning I'm having a conversation back and forth with a guy on Reddit who's a trades person and he is saying that everyone on his crew thinks he's just absolutely crazy for wearing these boots. And then twice a summer they're running to the store to buy another pair of commercial work boots. And he was just saying I'm laughing all the way to the bank that I buy once, cry once, and then we're going to take care of you. Now this is not always what we want to do, but say you got that sizing wrong by half a size. We could probably adjust that when you rebuild.
Speaker 1:We just rebuilt a boot for a mutual friend of ours and he wanted a little bit different heel stack. He wanted to change something a little bit. We can accommodate that within reason. One thing I'll touch on here in the history and evolution of boot making in the Pacific Northwest, we're Knicks handmade boots and for a long time we were incredibly custom and what that meant was I was going to come here and sit down with you and measure your foot and take 40 different measurements and if you had a weird little bump out on your pinky toe, we're going to go to that last and put some Bondo on it and bump that out. We were going full-blown custom. Now it's slow, it's not scalable and the really interesting thing is, ultimately we were not finding a better fit.
Speaker 1:We were getting more returns and more people were I wouldn't say displeased, but it just wasn't meeting their expectation of a fully quote unquote custom boot. What we found now is, by being very meticulous in our sizing and utilizing the resources that we have online and through our customer service team, we can get you 90% of the way there. And then, because this is an organic material, it's going to accommodate that funky spot in your foot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what we always talked about. When you're breaking in boots for fire or for work or something else, it ends up being a compromise between your foot and the boot. Like they learn to love each other 100%. Yeah, and it is pretty cool. I put on my old fire boots this spring to do some impromptu firefighting and I mean it just felt like home. You and I hadn't worn, I hadn't worn the things in a decade, right, right, and uh, slid my foot in there. It's just like boom, this, this is perfect, like it's, it's still there. And uh, yeah, that's a boot that I bought in 2004. Um, absolutely incredible, absolutely incredible. And if you take care of that leather, that leather will take care of you.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I used to be a big nerd about taking care of my boots and I really enjoyed that process. So when I got back from a fire, um, I I've always believed in the horse saddle self model, right, that comes from the cavalry days. The Marine Corps uses that for tanks, horse saddle self. So that's the order of precedent that you take care of your things in and, uh, so get off of a fire, you take care of all of your gear before you take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:And for me that meant I was going to, you know, make sure that my saw was sharp, that my Pulaski was sharp, that you know my, my rope was, was picked clean of any kind of seeds for the, for the next rappel or whatever. Like everything was going to be perfect. And I was also going to clean my boots and put oil back on them and I loved that process, right, I I was an Obenhoff's guy, I'm still an Obenhoff's guy. So I would take that stuff and it smells good, it's got beeswax in it, it feels good. Take a little bit and you work it into your whole boot and it just ends up looking all nice and pretty and you know it responds and continues to do the work that you ask of it. I think that's pretty special.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we see that particularly the wildland firefighters are often the best at it, which is interesting because they probably have the least time and comfort to take care of that, but they're relying on it, so they do it, I would say, even for the guy at home. Little things. You know, it's not for everyone, but boot dryers are something regardless of what boot you're wearing, whether you're in our boot or a synthetic hunting boot keeping your boots dry is going to make them last significantly longer. You know, even we don't have insoles, but like pulling insoles out, doing those things matter on on your boots and how long they last. And then I'd also say, just from a character standpoint. So this is a little bit more in the style side of the business, the fashion side of the business, but there are. There's this competition called the patina Thunderdome that happens every year, happens in October, and it's gotten to be a huge thing in a very tiny community so it's patina, thunderdome, patina, thunderdome so coming up here we're getting ready to run a patina thunderdome sale.
Speaker 1:If you want to participate, I'll make sure you have your boot in time. But if you're going into the dome, everyone tries a game, the dome, and, and what they?
Speaker 1:what they do is they call us and they're like what's a leather no one else has or what what do I need to know, or this or that, and a lot of what it comes down to is actually boot care. So these guys have a limited period of time where you have to wear it every day. You download their app, you have to upload a photo and the community decides who wins.
Speaker 1:Um, nick's has done very well in this in the last couple of years, but part of that is we're thinking about the boots and the things that people want to see in more of this aesthetic focused competition. But the guys that win meticulously brush their boots. And so, because this boot has an outside shell and an inside shell, which we should come back to and talk about when we think about the purchasing decisions that need to be made, but that the brush brings out a lot of character. The oil, the way you think about all those things the leather has natural or added waxes and oils on top of what's naturally in it. The brush brings that character out. Now, brushing comes from the fact that it keeps your boots clean and dry and it is actually a functional thing. But it's just a funny aside that people are totally gaming this to get as much wear as they possibly can during the time period of the competition, so that you know they get the most thumbs up.
Speaker 2:That's hilarious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty funny. Dude, I mean try going back to, you know, the late 1960s and the Timberfellers and explaining to them that there was going to be a patina thunderdome on the internet. You know, I started my career in the denim world and that's where I think it came from.
Speaker 1:These guys would buy the thickest, gnarliest denim you could possibly wear. You couldn't sit down. Guys would get them three sizes too small so that they moved with their body. They do all these things because indigo, another natural material that has a dye on the outside and a white core. The more you wear it much like a leather, the more it wears in and you're trying to bring that character from the inside outside. So it kind of started in the denim world and now it's moved into the boot world. Those two are very closely connected, certainly in kind of the fashionable side of our business.
Speaker 2:What's rough out.
Speaker 1:Rough out. I'm glad you asked. That's where I wanted to go. So rough out is the inside of the leather. So the leather is going to have kind of a tougher outer shell and then more the substrate behind that is this interwoven connective tissue. So if you go out and you buy a, for the most part, a standard work boot, you're actually going to get the smooth side out, and the vast majority of what we sell is smooth side out. Aesthetically it's more consistent, it takes color better, it does kind of crease and build more character. But if your goal is to have the hardest wearing boot, rough out is 100% the answer. And this is why Shout out to Ben Geiser, a saddle maker. He explained this to me that if you are working on the smooth side of the leather and you stick a knife through it, you have deteriorated the structure of that leather all the way through, top to bottom. It's done At that point you have a hole and so let's, I'm going to make up a number here. But let's say that outer shell makes up 20 to 30% of the overall thickness of the leather. You've put the most sensitive or most critical piece on the outside.
Speaker 1:Now it's not to say it's not tough. It is going to last the average guy a very, very long time and it's not common that we get a hole in a boot. Um, just based on what, how boots are being utilized. But if you're a wildland firefighter swinging a pulaski, using a chainsaw, doing all these things or honestly, ranching, um, you know cowboys, mule skinners, anything like this where you're around a really harsh environment, even walking around out here, I mean, with all the rocks and everything, every time I bump a smooth boot you just kind of cringe a little bit.
Speaker 1:Rough out is going to put all that soft portion of the leather on the outside. So it's got that uh, furrier, look, furry is probably the wrong word, but I think everyone knows what I'm saying. It's going to have that on the outside more of a suede look, suede is actually the other half of that that gets discarded. So it's going to look more of a suede look, suede is actually the other half of that that gets discarded. So it's going to look more like a suede on the outside. But what you've done is you've protected the inside of the boot, the most critical piece for keeping a barrier between your foot and the outside elements.
Speaker 1:I also think it wears beautifully as well, it wears very different. It's awesome the pair of boots that I have on right now Packer boots. My wife and I got married down here a few years ago and I went to the local bar after the wedding and guy walked, tells me he says great boots, but you should have done them in rough out, like I'm. I'm the guy in a suit over there with my boots on and all he can tell me is I should have built them in rough out. So when you get into an environment of folks who are used to working hard in their boots, you're going to see a lot of rough out.
Speaker 2:I'm team rough out, yeah, through and through, yeah. So when you know all, all of my Knicks boots are rough out and what people will say is that a rough out heels? Well, it, it doesn't. It's. It's no longer a living thing, even though it does have some, some lifelike qualities to it. It does have some lifelike qualities to it, but all of those little cuts and stuff like that that happen, they just tend to go away somehow and, yeah, I also tend to think that they're more comfortable.
Speaker 1:I think there's something to that. Here's another thing I would add as well. When you go into a more traditional hunting boot or a hiking boot, a lot of times you are going to see actually a rough out on the outside. So if they've married leather and synthetics, a lot of times you're going to see that synthetic. Here's the piece of that, though, that you can't see everything there. It likely doesn't have the smooth layer behind it. That's the most premium.
Speaker 1:If we start from the outside and work backwards, that barrier is critically important to the function of leather and we get that plus some more, so that we've created thickness. So in a work boot that's going to be seven to eight ounces. In a heritage boot that's going to be five to six ounces. Now that, right off the bat, is about twice what you're going to get if you walk into a store and buy any type of work boot today. But then what happens behind that?
Speaker 1:That's suede, and you know suede has a very great character to it. It's very fashionable, you can wax it, there's some cool things you can do with suede. But if you think about it, you don't have that barrier. So both sides of a suede are the same. So when you look at a synthetic work boot, it is typically going to be laminated over a another synthetic but you still don't have the most durable piece of the leather. It's kind of they're more for aesthetic.
Speaker 1:Um, the other thing is the tensile strength of of a suede. I mean suede. The tensile strength of suede compared to regular leather is incredibly different. Tissue paper, yeah, Tissue paper, Um, um, and and I think everyone's familiar enough with leather to kind of understand what that looks like it's all these intersecting fibers. I just think that's a piece. When I look at a lot of synthetic boots today, I'm moving more into a phase where I ask why? So? Whether that's my hunting pack or my rifle or anything it's like, why did they do this? Why was the choice? And most of the time in those types of boots it's largely aesthetic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, uh, I'm not ever the guy to talk to about aesthetics, I'm the guy to talk to about function, right? Um, I do believe that it's important to look cool, right, I think you should always look cool, but I will never sacrifice that for the actual functional quality of something, and I think rough out is a great example of where those two things happen simultaneously. Looks cool, works good.
Speaker 1:I'll throw out one of my hockey terms you got to look good to play good man. There's something to it. Facts, yeah, rough out's beautiful. I love it. So rough out. If this is something that's interesting to you, I would really steer you towards our 1964 work leathers. That's what your game breakers built out of. You're in a 1964 brown. You can get that in tan black. That's going to be our bread and butter work boot. There's other, if you have specific use cases, we do a weather shield that has more silicone impregnated into it. So that's going to give you not waterproofness, but it's going to bead up and roll off and so if the water's not staying on there for a long time, it has less opportunity to go through. It's as close to waterproof as you're going to get. But those maybe Mac support being the third one I would look at, particularly if you're a bigger guy, you're working hard, you're a you know true construction, heavy equipment framer, things like that. That's something to look at.
Speaker 2:Well, let's continue down this road. For just a moment, give me the three-minute process on how somebody should select a pair of boots, because you guys have a lot of models. Yeah, it can be a little intimidating.
Speaker 1:First, I'm going to give you the 10 second version and that is, go wherever you want to go to see our boots. So, if that's our website or Instagram or whatever it is, find a boot you love and buy it. There is analysis, paralysis in this space. People get stuck on what leather, what boot. Should it be six inches or eight inches? All of that. Go, find something you love and buy it. If you want to look at every brown leather that we have, you need to block out some time, and I promise on the other side there's going to be some level of confusion Now. We'll do everything we can to help you through that and our team is fantastic at that. But that's where I'd start is just find something you love and buy it. Find something that you think is going to suit you well and buy it If you want to be a little bit more mindful of it, because it is an investment. We fully recognize it's an investment. I would think about your use case and that's going to put you in one of two buckets.
Speaker 1:Now the line between these two is a little bit blurry, but we separate ourselves in work boots and heritage. Work boot is built for nine to five 40 hour a week, work, ranching, trades, anything like that, and if you're already a trades person you're a plumber we have a boot for you and it's actually discounted and you're going to get it in 30 days or less. So if you're a guy who relies on your boots, I can make sure you have that boot as quick as we can make it. You're going to have a little bit limited leather options and you're not going to be able to do a whole lot of customization to it, but we can get you there, and if you compare that to the price of other work boots today, that is not far off from where most of those guys sit. So if you're in the trades, that's where I would point you. If you're a guy who wants a general purpose boot and you know you're going to be doing some hard work, work is a great place to start. The work is a great place to start, the main difference there being you're in a little bit heavier leather. The second path you can go down is more of a heritage boot. This is for the guy that maybe works an office job or honestly works, but is just cognizant of the fact that he is not a wildland firefighter or a tradesperson. This is going to put you in a little bit lighter weight leather, with all the same construction. It's the same line, built in the same factory, and I promise you it's heavier than a mass produced boot that you're going to go buy. So you're going to get all of that. So I would pick one of those two paths.
Speaker 1:And then you need to start thinking about the last and the last, the kind of the last and the sole. So we've picked. Whether we're in worker heritage, then do we want full support? That's going to be a 67 or a 55 last. What that means is kind of how much material is going to be under your arch? I'm a 67 guy. I like that full arch support. We see benefits in kind of lower back pain and other things like that, even in the hunting industry. You've seen the popularity of these orthotics. It's for the same reason. So 67 or 55 is a great option and those are going to be on a more traditional heeled boot for the most part.
Speaker 1:The other option and this is actually where you've landed on your most recent boot is an H&W last. So this is a 360 stitch down construction like all of our boots, but you can still get full support in it. You can get an H&W or a 55 last. You can go into more detail on that on our website or with our team. But a little bit lower heel height break-in is a little bit faster. It's a little bit more flexible, a little more feel Quieter, quieter I like driving in a H&W boot a little bit more so you might want to look at something like that.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing I would talk about in kind of last and then I'll wrap it up here is the newest last that we have is the Thurman last, and I think this is going to be the last that people gravitate towards for the next 10 years. It's got it's got a great history. There's some awesome videos we have online that folks can look at. But it came out of world war one when they were having all kinds of foot problems, and so I won't go into all the history. But essentially the military said we need to come up with a better option, and they found that there wasn't enough room in the toes because they'd been work boots. Service boots at the time had been built off of really fashionable pointy toe lasts, so everyone's-.
Speaker 2:From riding boots.
Speaker 1:Yes, riding boots, so everyone's toes are crammed in there. So they made more, more room. We have updated that last for 2024 and actually released last year in 2023 to say, like, what does that look like today?
Speaker 1:I have not put someone in a thermon last boot that hasn't said like, shoot, this is a problem like now I need every other boot, a thermon last, because it's just that comfortable, yeah, um, so I point people there. Um, let me talk last about if you know you're in one of those two buckets, where should you look first? If you're in the work boot world, look at a builder pro. That's the bread and butter. It's the work boot. There's lots of variation there. You can look there. If you're law enforcement, military, our boots are approved by three branches of the military but used across four, but officially in three. We have military boots as well, so those are going to be on an H&W construction. They're going to look a whole lot like a boot that you would wear in service, but they're built with the knowledge of how you're going to use your boots downrange. So I would look, or in whatever application that is, I would look at that line as well.
Speaker 1:If you jump over to the heritage world, I think this is where it can get a lot more confusing. There are so many options over there. If you're kind of a work guy, that this is kind of me. I like to DIY around the house, do things at home, but I wanted a burly boot. I'd look at the Urban Logger. Urban Logger is going to take all the DNA of a builder pro and a lighter weight leather. We're going to knock two inches off the height of it, make it a little bit more approachable boot. And then, if you're looking for what I often call like my church boots, what is that boot that you're going to dress up on date night? You can't beat a Robert, a Falcon or a Traveler. There are many more boots besides those, but I would start with those three. They all have kind of a distinct look. Maybe the Americana is the fourth one I would throw in there. A couple of those are going to look a whole lot like mass-produced boots that you've seen before and I think sometimes that resonates with a customer. The Americana is a very familiar silhouette to folks. The Traveler, or even a Mocktoe, is really popular out there. Anything like that. Those are going to be great options as well. Start there, find a leather that you love and order a pair.
Speaker 1:The last thing I'll say, on boots as well, is a kind of boot selection is. One of the really common buying behaviors I've seen over the last few months is guys who buy work boots. So they bought a builder pro. Oftentimes they bought two builder pros because they're rotating their boots. There's a whole world you can go down of how to how to take care of them. They're starting to buy that Falcon and they're buying that Falcon for the weekend because their boots are so comfortable. That that's. They want to feel that on the weekend. But they're running around with the kids. They got to go to soccer practice. They're going to take their wife out for a date. They're going to throw on a nicer pair of jeans. That's a really common buying behavior that we see as well. So if you're one of those guys who's working hard in your boots, take a peek over in the heritage world. There's a lot of cool stuff. We also have slip-ons and chore boots and you know there's a lot of assortment if you get further over into that world as well.
Speaker 2:Yep, and the boot that I'm wearing right now that I'm going to be hunting in a lot this year um, not exclusively, but probably most of the time uh is the game breaker and it's rough out game breaker. Um fantastic boot and I have just a a 0% fear that that boot is going to let me down. Um, so, if I'm going to go into a hunting camp, uh, you know I'm going to be hunting abroad this year, like the times where I can't I can't bring extras, that's that's what's going and, uh, it's going to work great.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Uh, okay. Last thing where do people find them?
Speaker 1:Nixbootscom. Go to the website. There's a lot on there. If you're overwhelmed, that's okay. You can reach out to our team. You can also reach out to me, Tate at Nixboots. If something we said today resonates with you and you want to find the perfect boot, I'm happy to help you.
Speaker 2:That's your email.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's my email. Tate's at Nixbootscom, the other place, and if I can answer the question, I assure you someone in the office can answer it.
Speaker 2:Okay, Links to all that in the podcast description as well, and gosh any closing thoughts man.
Speaker 1:One other place, actually, I'll say YouTube. We do a lot of content on YouTube to help people with these questions, so check out our channel, and partners that we have as well have a lot of good content up there, so I would look there.
Speaker 2:You have a great Instagram too.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you're showing Americans making an American product that's going to last for generations and I think that's pretty gangster.
Speaker 1:We're super excited about where we're headed. We have done really, really well in the boot nerd world and also in the trades, and we're really excited to kind of expand that a little bit more. You're a key piece of that. We see our products as serving a lot of those needs, and I will just emphasize that I'm here because I'm proud of the way that we're building boots. We're pushing innovation where we can. We're pushing it with leathers, we're pushing it with soles we didn't even talk about soles today, but we're developing our own custom soles because what we want isn't available in America, and so we're working with brands to do that. So I'm just really proud of the way that we're building boots and I'm really happy to have you along for the ride.
Speaker 2:It's an absolute honor. Thank you, thanks, yep, appreciate you. Tate. Bye everybody. I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who's sent emails, who's sent messages. Your support is incredible, and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.