Since 1986, SB Foot Tanning Company is most known as the tannery owned by Red Wing, and with good reason: every bit of leather used on Red Wing Heritage footwear is developed and made by SB Foot just a few miles from Red Wing’s US manufacturing facility.

But the tannery itself and its relationship with Red Wing stretch much further back—to the late 1800s. And SB Foot creates leather for far more than just its neighbor in Red Wing, Minnesota—everyone from solo makers, to Russell Moccasin, to the US military.

Lacy Schumann has spent her last five years developing leather for SB Foot. Maybe Lacy was always supposed to make leather—she did grow up on a beef farm—but it took a veer away from a career in the art world to get her there.

I absolutely loved this chat with Lacy, who takes me through SB Foot history 101, what leather development at SB Foot entails (along with the nonstop interactions with Red Wing’s development team, how hard it is to accurately color leather—and let’s not even get started on truly waterproofing the stuff—why she’s in total roughout mode right now, and plenty more.

Mentioned in the episode:

The Tannery & The Shoe: A Deep Look Inside The Red Wing & SB Foot Factories, by Josh Bornstein

https://www.stitchdown.com/brands/red-wing-boots-and-shoes/red-wing-shoes-sb-foot-factory-visit/

This episode was sponsored by Coblr—the business management system powering the repair industry. https://www.coblros.com/

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Check out our site!

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/

No conversation about the all-time great women's shoe designers is complete without a very long segue into Stuart Weitzman. Born into a shoemaking family who manufactured for decades in longtime US shoemaking hub Haverhill, Massachusetts, Weitzman quickly established himself as the rare shoemaker to both the stars AND literally any woman who just wanted a fantastic pair of shoes.

For this chat, we covered why comfort matters so much and how to make it happen, why Stuart ended up in Spain after US manufacturing went kaput, that time Aretha Franklin pulled her shoes off at the AMAs to thank him, his various muses through the decades, his incredible donations to an in-the-works Historic New England shoe museum project, and plenty more.

HUGE thanks to Stuart and Historic New England for all the support in making this episode.
https://www.historicnewengland.org/

Production: Aiden McDonald x Visual Sound Productions https://www.visualsoundprod.com/

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Check out our site!

https://www.stitchdown.com/

2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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I had an absolute gas with Dave Mills of New River Boot, and Dave Corey of Oldspeed Manufacturing on this one. After years of being two of my favorite people on the internet to talk about footwear with, I was lucky enough to spend time with both of them last October at our Stitchdown’s Boot Camp expo—and I guess I needed more. Both Daves have in some ways followed similar paths into the craft and business, and in other ways have diverged—which I found as fascinating, instructive, and inspiring as the overlaps.

This episode is a lot of things, for sure, but the piece that excited me most is how it turned into something of a starter kit for aspiring handmade boot and shoemakers, covering everything from finding your first last and essential tools, to what the feeling is like when that first wonderful someone wants to buy a pair of boots that YOU MADE, to navigating the ever-tricky pricing question, to, of course, their most gruesome bookmaking injuries. It’s honestly amazing these guys still have hands.

Here’s Dave Corey of Oldspeed MFG, and Dave Mills of New River Boot, on the Shoecast.

https://oldspeedmfg.com/

https://www.instagram.com/newriverboot/

Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membership

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Check out our site!

https://www.stitchdown.com/

2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/