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. ...

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 ...

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...

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 f...

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. 

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 pa...

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 i...

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 himsel...

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 w...

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 f...

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 cobbli...

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 wome...

This week on the Shoecast our chat is with Clayton Chambers, founder of the Substack newsletter Sprezza and general menswear individual about the world. After running through the footwear signposts in his own life, from churchboy pe...

The one and only Tichoblanco, aka Tichoblancoshoes, aka just plain old Ticho, is BACK. Where’s he been?Well he’ll tell ya all about that. What’s he been up to? The biggest answer to that is: happily grinding on his Østmo x Iron Boot...

In part two of a tag-team with the Full Grain Podcast, the ever-handsome/charming Phil Kalas grills Ben on what to expect at Stitchdown's Boot Camp Chicago 2025 mega-expo and footwear-loving community epicenter this November. Japane...

Last week we had our Stitchdown community's first gathering at the new Viberg NYC store—an honestly fabulous-looking little shop in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood that’s full of  Viberg’s core classic product like stitchdown 2030 and 310 ...

FREE Shoecast Bonus Episode—we've got plenty more for Stitchdown Premium subsribersJason Pecarich of Division Road and Motiv/Arch Support Project co-founder Samuel Wei came on to discuss ASP's legitimately unique approach to foo...

It’s not a stretch to say there is no quality footwear culture quite like Japan’s. But WHY does the Japanese passion for making and wearing great boot and shoes  exist?Well, I had to go to Tokyo to find out. As the final...

The Iron Snail, aka Michael Kristy, is one of my favorite YouTube inhabitants, thanks to his legitimately unique approach to reviewing, historicizing, and manufacturing crazily high-quality footwear and clothing. I sat down with Mi...

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 ...

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, Weitz...

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 bot...

About a half hour from Reno, there’s a place called Virginia City Nevada, where everything feels like it’s 1859 and the US’s largest silver deposit was just discovered. The bars say saloon and look the part. The cemetery is definitely haunted. ...

Tokyo-based, half-American/half-Japanese Seiji McCarthy discusses his uniquely late path into shoemaking, the development of his vintage-Americana-inspired bespoke line, why he feels more American in Japan, and why it’s sometimes better if your...

This week we've got a chat with Andrew Turriff, a Canadian shoemaker who studied at Cordwainer’s Footwear Design program in London, worked for some big sneaker brands, and did pattern work for fellow Canadians Viberg and time in the orthopedic ...