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The Stitchdown Shoecast

Stitchdown

Exploring the wonderful world of quality footwear, how it’s made, and all the things we love about it. Check out Stitchdown.com for shoe and boot reviews, interviews with industry titans, profiles, release info, and more.

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  • 25 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 1 hr 19 min
  • English

Episodes 25

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  • S16 · E8
    Dec 10, 2025 · 1 hr 27 min

    Thursday Boot Co.'s Nolan Walsh on Their Own León Factory, Last Obsessiveness, and The Comfort Question

    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 years after Thursday launched a Kickstarter campaign to try and sell a few boots. Pretty wild stuff. Nolan and I pretty much cover everything in this one—the full version of the Thursday origin story that had more twists and turns than I expected, how they develop product and manage production in factories on multiple continents around the idea of supply chain centricity, Nolan’s quality control mania, their online marketing you may or may not have seen, and how in the world, after more than a decade in business, their core product is still only $199. And yes, of course, The Poron Question. Obviously we did that. https://thursdayboots.com/ 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 https://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/ We'd better see you at Stitchdown Chicago 2026—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—Nov 6-7 at Artifact Events. https://www.stitchdownexpo.com/ A website. We have one. https://www.stitchdown.com/

  • S16 · E7
    Nov 25, 2025 · 1 hr 21 min

    Shoebag w/ Ticho: The Best Shoemaking Teachers, Arch Support, and a LOT of Butter

    If you came to this podcast about shoes and boots and leather hoping that you’d get to listen to extended conversations about imported cultured butter, you’ve made a fantastic call. Because this, dear listeners, is the Shoebag, in which myself and the legend they know as Tichoblanco answer listener questions about roughout Chelsea boots, arch support in surprising lasts, who we want to teach us to make boots…and imported cultured butter. And burritos. And bagels! And diners. And waffles, which were totally unrelated to the diner conversation. And, New Jersey Costco gas station Rod Stewart. It’ll all make sense, I promise. 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 https://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/ We'd better see you at Stitchdown Chicago 2026—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—Nov 6-7 at Artifact Events. https://www.stitchdownexpo.com/ A website. We have one. https://www.stitchdown.com/

  • S16 · E6
    Nov 6, 2025 · 1 hr 2 min

    Red Wing Heritage President George Curleigh on Retail, Time Capsules, and The Red Wing Way

    George Curleigh has been president of Red Wing’s heritage division since 2019, in which time he’s been able to enjoy a list of very fun things including a worldwide pandemic, a factory shut-down, a cyber-attack, a periodically dwindling labor force, a broken supply chain for US-made components, and his OWN CHILDREN stealing his boots. So what’s the general feeling in Red Wing, Minnesota, according to George? Actually pretty fantastic. Retail expansion is going hugely well, especially in Asia. The European and North American markets are showing a ton of strength. A new factory recently came online. And after a massive contraction, a flurry of new styles are being released, and old classics everyone wants revived. We get into all of that, plus why Red Wing buried a time capsule full of boots and manufacturing instructions to be dug up in 120 years, how that endeavor led to realizing Red Wing founder Charles Beckman survived a deadly shipwreck off Nova Scotia back in the 1900s, what it was like coming to old-school-as-it-comes Red Wing from Arc'teryx, one off the world’s most technologically driven apparel companies, how to get people loving working in a boot factory, and why that aforementioned time when his son swiped his 875s was actually a hugely meaningful moment, in the best way. 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 https://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/ We'd better see you at Stitchdown Chicago 2026—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—Nov 6-7 at Artifact Events. https://www.stitchdownexpo.com/ A website. We have one. https://www.stitchdown.com/

  • S16 · E5
    Oct 30, 2025 · 1 hr 17 min

    How to Revive The Cobbling Industry? Teach it in High School—and it's Already Working.

    This past fall, Matt Paisley launched a shoe repair program at Colorado's Thunder Ridge high school, with nearly two dozen students taking the plunge and immediately being drawn into the program, skill development, and practical hands-on cobbling work. I had Matt lay out a blueprint for how he navigated making the shoe repair program happen, and the curriculum he’s been teaching in the first, legitimately monumental go-round. The fact that Matt’s program exists is a wonderful and inspiring story on its own—as is all the remarkable help that’s been offered by the repair and quality footwear community. But potential for Matt’s idea and approach to spread to other schools is what makes this, in my humble estimation, one of the most important episodes we’ve ever published. Here’s Matt Paisley, the guy who lit the spark that just might fix a broken shoe repair pipeline, on the Shoecast. 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 https://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/ We'd better see you at Stitchdown Chicago 2026—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—Nov 6-7 at Artifact Events. https://www.stitchdownexpo.com/ A website. We have one. https://www.stitchdown.com/

  • S16 · E4
    Oct 24, 2025 · 1 hr 19 min

    SERES Founder Vanessa Arroyo on León, Mexico's Remarkable Shoemaking Culture

    My chat this week is with Vanessa Arroyo, founder and designer of SERES Footwear, a focused line designed from the ground up with high-quality natural materials in a way that’s not often seen in the women’s space. Once known as “the weird girl in high school making her own clothes” and thrown into shoemaking almost by chance, Vanessa fell in love with the art and craft of shoemaking between New York City, Chicago, and Leon Mexico, where she found unexpected meaning in her Mexican-American heritage—and sometimes had to stop working when it was raining too hard (you'll see what she means, I kinda love that part). As she walks us through the cobblestone streets of León, Vanessa paints a vivid picture of a shoemaking community bound by heart, heritage, and hands-on artistry. We explore how that local ecosystem fuels creativity, what might be lost as manufacturing drifts further overseas, eand how working within constraints can actually sharpen a design process. I’m also hugely excited and quite honored to have SERES as our first-ever exclusively women’s-focused brand at our Stitchdown’s Boot Camp Chicago quality footwear expo on November 8th, 2025—if you’re reading this before then, trust me, GET YOURSELF TO CHICAGO, you won’t be disappointed by what Vanessa and our other 45 vendors have to showcase. Here’s Vanessa Arroyo, of SERES Footwear, on the Shoecast. 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 https://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/ We'd better see you at Stitchdown Chicago 2026—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—Nov 6-7 at Artifact Events. https://www.stitchdownexpo.com/ A website. We have one. https://www.stitchdown.com/

Showing 21–25 of 25 episodes