BUSINESS
leather is mouth-watering. A pair of Lucchese boots doesn’t come cheap as they can run well into the thousands of dollars. But then they do take almost two months to make, and nobody said that ostrich and alligator skins are easy to come by. Skins are hand tooled, hand painted and shaped to fit perfectly – take good care of them and they’ll last. “We’ve had people who’ve had their boots for 40 years,” boasts Mario Vega, the director of marketing. “And if the leather sole wears out, we’ll replace it for you.” Tempting, but we hadn’t finished yet as next on the list was the Tres Outlaws boot company where co-owners Scott Emmerich and Jerry Black (the third outlaw “we hung” jokes Emmerich) supply their boots to everyone from Madonna to Bruce Springsteen. Whilst not known for being a cowboy on the silver screen, Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently boasts 37 pairs of boots from the company (clearly 38
Open Skies
Above left: The master craftsmen at Lucchese look the part and wear their boots proudly. Top right: Rocketbuster Boots boasts a huge range. The average cost is $900 a pair but the top end reaches $4,000. Above: A pair of custom boots at Lucchese is totally hand made and it takes two months to complete a pair.
he’s a cowboy boot fan) and while we don’t know exactly how much he paid for his footwear, Tres Outlaws has a reputation as the most expensive cowboy boot maker in Texas. The Mexican, a pair of boots inlaid with 22 rare Mexican coins and intricate hand tooling, costs $75,000. Despite the prices, Tres Outlaws is a distinctly modest outfit, where a small group of craftsmen build about 15 pairs of boots a week – so don’t expect a glitzy tour. If you like a bit of quirk to your boot buying experience, however, it is worth taking a visit to Rocketbuster Boots, our last port of call. A relative newcomer to the scene, the company, run by husband and wife team Nevena Christi and Marty Snortum has only been going 20 years, but they’ve already made an impact by creating the largest pair of cowboy boots in the world, which has held the Guinness record since 1999. But then what would you expect from a guy who swapped his 1953 Cadillac hearse and life