350 CRUISER AND 350 CUTTER ARE NOW AVAILABLE IN STITCHDOWN CONSTRUCTION
For the first time in our history, our most popular legacy models — the 350 Cruiser and 350 Cutter — are now available in our rebuildable Stitchdown construction line. After the success of our Fire Hybrid, Foreman, and Journeyman stitchdown models, our Fall 2022 collection includes our iconic 350 models with more legacy models coming in 2023. Both 350s will be offered with new leathers from Seidel Tanning, five colors in Double Shot leather. Each hide is treated in the tradition of vintage leathers from the 1940s and will be the featured leather of our new Legacy Stitchdown models, stocked and ready to ship.
American manufacturers are still suffering the effects of the pandemic. Our Spokane factory has been producing boots at top capacity. As soon as we build and rebuild them, we ship them out. Staffing and supply chain issues have resulted in some of the lowest stock levels in our entire history. In a matter of months, our lead times went from 4-6 weeks to 18-20 weeks for Legacy models. President of White’s Boots, Eric Kinney, who worked on the bootjack for 26 years, started to explore solutions 18 months ago. His goal was to put more of our top sellers on the shelf and ready to ship. Stitchdown construction — handmade in our factory — is the best way to do it.
Over the last several decades, White’s Boots has produced hundreds of thousands of boots in our Goodyear Welt, Stitchdown, and Handsewn Stitchdown construction lines. Significant growth across all three during the recent boom of American-made work boots has led us to focus on Stitchdown construction and here’s why:
The Goodyear Welt Construction line has grown more and more over the decades, especially with the introduction of the Perry, Millwood, and Chore Boot. Our goal is to build the best work boots at any price. The Goodyear Welt, made available at $300 or more, is a proven construction process for a resoleable work boot off the shelf. Our factory is able to produce more Goodyear Welt boots than any other construction type. We’ll continue to design and build more boots in this line, but after all that, there are still more workers who need something that is only made available in a rebuildable boot…
The Stitchdown Construction line is where our factory will be able to serve more and more workers and weekenders who need a resoleable and rebuildable work boot that is off the shelf or ready to ship within a few weeks. That requires us to bolster our line with old models and design new models, such as the C355 Logger that is set to launch later this year. The highest standard for the most respected handmade work boot companies is Stitchdown construction, made available at $550 and several hundred dollars more depending on the maker. By eliminating the labor and skill of the hand-welted stitching process, capacity for producing boots goes up while labor costs go down, but White’s Boots still likes to do it the old way even when a new way presents itself…
The Handsewn Stitchdown construction line, the heart and soul of White’s Boots for 169 years, can only be produced by expert bootmakers, made available at $700 or more depending on countless customization options. Still to this day, White’s Boots employs the most hand-welted bootmakers in the world and that means we build the most hand-welted work boots in the world. Almost all of the handmade work boot companies have completely abandoned the Handsewn Stitchdown process, but we still believe the best work boot in the world is hand-lasted and hand-welted by the same bootmaker. It takes a master. Since the 1930s, our legacy models have always been offered in this construction, but for the first time, we’re starting to offer our original models in Stitchdown construction and that means our customers will have more and more rebuildable options in stock.
White’s Boots is proud to offer the first two legacy models in our Stitchdown construction line, the most affordable handmade rebuildable boot we offer. Both the 350 Cruiser and 350 Cutter have been top sellers for decades and workers across every trade have proven their worth. Visit our product listings to see a list of leathers and sizes available and stay tuned for the launch of our C355 Logger later this year.
To learn more about our boot construction process, visit the Construction page on our website.
