The Stitchdown PREMIUM Shoecast

This week on the Shoecast it's Sarah McIntosh, founder of the Chicago School of Shoemaking and Leather Arts, who has lived a life shaped by making things by hand. Sarah shares how living in a back-to-the-land community in the 70s (and building her own log house!) led to making a pair of shoes for herself—which grew into a decades-long career crafting custom-fit footwear.  She also reflects on...

Alligator leather. It's bold. It's fancy. It's expensive . It’s also the result of, and driving force behind, a massive conservation effort—and one of the toughest crafts in tanning. That’s why we brought Christy Gilmore of American Tanning and Leather on the Shoecast, to explore how her family built a U.S. tannery that takes wild-caught alligator hides from raw material to finished...

Ticho hath returned for the Season 19 Shoebag episode, in which we answer listener questions ranging from shoe-related time travel, to the upsides and downs of the quality footwear loving community growing like crazy in the past decade—and also preview Stitchdown Expo 2026 in Chicago this Nov 6-7.

Thiele Tanning has operated out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin since 1934. And while things rarely stay the same in tanning—Thiele has made everything from bowling shoe leather, to baseball glove leather, to some actually VERY good patent leather—for decades its wheelhouse has been lining leather. If you’ve got a pair of shoes or boots you truly love from a historic manufacturer, there’s a solid chance i...

It wasn’t always easy for two Belgian guys named Robin to build a shoe brand. Early production setbacks, finding investment, and eventually building a physical retail presence are never easy to contend with. But even though both Lennertson founders grew up in a culture of “we make and fix things around here,”building knowledge in footwear was perhaps their biggest hurdle—one they took on voracious...

There are custom bootmakers—and then there's Texas Traditions. Opened in 1977 by “The Picasso of cowboy boots” Charlie Dunn, Texas Traditions has been run by Charlie’s apprentice Lee Miller since 1986.  In one of the great Shoecast interviews we’ll ever have the pleasure of publishing, Lee gets deep into the shop’s history, Charlie’s uniquely mystical approach to cowboy bootmaking, the Mexica...

If you know Albert Muzquiz, it’s almost definitely as Edgy Albert, his highly accurate internet alter-ego.  Albert’s not just another menswearfluencer come-lately—he was also the first writer for Stitchdown.com , worked at LA’s iconic Self Edge, and wrote his college thesis on denim. Of course we get Albert’s view on what kind of shoes people are wearing in LA, and play a typically opinionated lit...

At one point, it was tough to find someone in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine that wasn't personally connected to the handsewn moccasin shoe industry. Today, few Maine shoemaking operations remain—but those twin cities on the Androscoggin River continue to house legitimately remarkable footwear manufacturing.  For 59 years, the Rancourt family has been a stalwart, crafting handsewn shoes in Lewiston—m...

Wolverine Worldwide is a footwear empire much bigger than just Wolverine 1000 Mile. Justin Cupps is six months into his role as President of the Work Group, which includes Merrell Work, Bates, HYTEST, CAT Footwear, Harley-Davidson Boots, Wolverine, AND Wolverine 1000 Mile.  Yes separating out those last two is essential, especially in the eyes of Justin—who sees huge opportunity with 1000 Mile as...

Last time Elizabeth Semmelhack—Director and Senior Curator of the Toronto's exceptional Bata Shoe Museum—was on the Shoecast, she ran down a (mostly) complete history of boots, overall. It was excellent.  This time Elizabeth is back to focus purely on cowboy boots—which is exactly what she's been doing for years while writing Rough & Ready, the most recent in a hugely rich (if far to...

Michael Williams is sometimes a “marketer who hates marketing,” who has helped many of the great US manufacturing brands, up to and including Red Wing. Other times he he’s writing his often menswear focused newsletter, the quietly massively influential A Continuous Lean.  A while back he pre-invented the idea now used by every single temporary market you now see everywhere, with his Pop Up Flea co...

Carmina Albaladejo heads US operations for the exquisite Spanish shoemaker with the exact same (first) name as her.  In this Stitchdown Shoecast episode we discuss how six generations of family history led to the founding of the Carmina brand, manufacturing in Spain, Carmina's growing US and global retail strategy (and the crucial importance of physical shoe stores), the brand's top-flig...

Hermann Oak has been tanning leather in St. Louis since 1881, and they pretty much still do it the same way—one way, which of course is veg-tanning. Traditionally a major player in the equestrian leather world, Hermann Oak is edging into the quality footwear space in a hugely exciting way.  So I chatted with Hermann Oak President Drew Gulick about the tanner's deep history, how making footwea...

Back in 2021, I got a great email from a young bootmaker named Nathan Florsheim who wanted to chat. Boy am I glad I took that call.  About a year later I had Nathan—great great great grandson of Milton Florsheim, yes, THAT Florsheim—on the Shoecast. Four years and 130 handmade pairs later, Nathan is absolutely rolling as a custom bootmaker who has truly seemed to find his own space, one that so ma...

It's extremely not easy to get boots hand-made by Nathan Florsheim—great great great grandson of Milton Florsheim, yes, THAT Florsheim—unless of course you listen to this episode.  https://nfbootmaker.com/

Hey! Ben from Stitchdown here.  This past season on the Shoecast I sat down wit with Brooklyn based bespoke shoemaker Anne Marika Verploegh Chassé. Marika’s a wonder, and touches so many areas of the footwear continuum. So we had to keep the chat in her Brooklyn apartment slash workshop going for this bonus episode, which covers everything from how she makes spot-on fitting shoes entirely out of p...

This week on the Shoecast we’re bringing back Rory Fortune, founder of Los Angeles-based Goods & Services, which continues to be one of the most interesting footwear operations out there.  We had Rory on back in 2024, and with the Goods & Services business and product range expanding like crazy, it seemed high time to get a closer look at exactly how Rory and team convert sneakers to a res...

How do we keep craft alive in an over-technological society? Is it via the individual maker? Or more of a collective workshop approach?  Houston-based bespoke cowboy bootmaker Zephan Parker has plenty of thoughts on all of it.  Zephan used to write graffiti and listen to hip hop while wearing Ralph Lauren. Now he runs a custom bespoke cowboy boot workshop in Houston, Texas. All those things, it tu...

My chat this week is with Brooklyn -based bespoke shoemaker, educator, and artist Anne Marika Verploegh Chassé, aka STIEFELwerk .  Two decades ago, Marika came at shoemaking from a fine arts background, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s seen her work. After years learning the craft under many of the great shoe and bookmaking teachers, today Marika focuses on the use of veg-tan leather—often fr...

It's Shoebag time for Shoecast season 17. Which means it's time for a serious dose of Ticho, who joins me to unpack all the biggest listener questions. Why are we both suddenly wearing the same barefoot-style shoes nonstop? Which iconic footwear figure from the past (aka, dead) would we love to spend a weekend in a deeply isolated cabin with? Why do we have so much ennui generated by hik...

When I met Emily Boksenbaum at our Maker’s Day 2025 conference in Chicago , I knew I had to get her on the Shoecast. Emily’s always made stuff. First it was art growing up, which led to a focus on fiber material studies in art school. Next came leather tooling, prop-making and other “creative odd jobs,” before going into corporate footwear design. That didn’t quite hit for her, which meant it was...

Justin FitzPatrick aka the Shoe Snob on fiery times in the comments section, what a dress shoe customer even looks like in 2026, button boots (obviously), and why it’s never been harder to start a shoe brand than right now.  https://theshoesnobblog.com/ https://www.jfitzpatrickfootwear.com/

In November 2025, we did a thing. Stitchdown’s Boot Camp 2025 Chicago was a quality footwear mega-expo, a materials trade show, a crossroads of the industry we love, and one big ol’ multi-day party with my favorite community in the world.  As part of that weekend in Chicago, I sat down with Shuyler Mowe of Nicks Boots and the one and only Skip Horween for a live Shoecast taping at the excellent Ho...

My chat this week is with Andrew Li of Philadelphia’s Franklin & Poe , one of the best shops in the US for serious quality footwear, denim, and more. I got to know Andrew over the last few years the old fashioned way—seeing him in person, sitting down, and chatting entirely too deeply about some boots and shoes and denim. Which is pretty much exactly what Andrew and team have done every day si...

The joke has always been that Thursday Boot Company’s Connor Wilson keeps his co-founder Nolan Walsh trapped in a factory working on the product. Turns out that joke actually true—except Nolan is the one very eagerly choosing to imprison himself.  That certainly hasn’t lessened since Thursday opened its own in-house manufacturing facility in North American bootmaking capital Leon Mexico—just 11 ye...