NICKS BOOTS | Factory Tour and Fitting

hey friends and welcome to the gentleman's journey i'm so excited to come at you from spokane washington we're over here at nick's boots we're going to do a tour with nathan he's going to take us through and show us how some of the boots are made some of the little processes they use and then i'm going to get fitted i really hope that you guys will stick around for that because i think it's gonna help you when you go to make that online order you'll know just what to look for so guys let's get into it a pair of our veg tan it's an officer boot okay so yeah a little bit newer it was an experimental veg stand but yeah yeah this is about two years on them and honestly i've kind of neglected them on the weekends and don't really clean them that much in the office so okay that's about where we are very good yeah yeah so we can kind of walk through the back here so this is our main fitting room so one of the advantages that we have here is we've got sizing from just about four to fourteen and about widths from like 4a all the way up to a couple left so that's going to be really narrow all the way to really wide and so there's tons of options for sizing you know you can really get that dialed in compared to most mass-produced boots yeah yeah yeah yeah so you can i mean you can pan around you can see some of the lasts here and uh perfect so we're gonna start uh we'll go start to finish and run back up and show you fitting so this is where all the leather comes in over there and it'll start here so all the leather for our boots starts on a roll called a side i'll kind of roll one out here this is one that's been been cut and so um this is the leather that's cut out we use these hydraulic presses okay with with something that's right yeah yeah and something called a clicker die yeah so so these clicker dies you can see the different shapes of the pieces of boots like this is going to be our heel counter so you can see that will wrap down around there and eventually be sewn together so once the boots are cut i'm gonna walk through you can see some of the parts here once the boots are cut they go to sewing and you can see on some of them here they're assembled piece by piece and coming along this is our stamping machine so pretty self-explanatory there puts our logo on them we come over here and see the tongue being put into the boot and yeah once the upper's all sewn up this is where it comes comes for lasting so lasting is essentially taking that sewn upper wrapping it around the boot so that it actually you know forms the shape and this is where it actually takes the size of the foot as well see a whole bunch of boots as they're lasting and kind of stretching and forming and a little bit of the process here [Music] yeah so if there's if there's abnormalities or certain things with the feet we can actually add additional pieces of leather onto the last say 99 of people don't need that but for those who do you know it is something that we offer um at that point you know uh it's kind of it's kind of a blurry line to a lot of folks a lot of people think of bespoke as not using any electricity you know everything is done by hand here we use electricity because it's better for people yeah and you have a more consistent product so so yeah i mean we use classification there yeah yeah right well you know i wouldn't say that's necessarily what everyone classifies it as but you know our boots are handmade you can see people working on them by hand so once the boots are lasted they'll come over here to our shanking area um in which you can see once it's lasted how it's formed around and when you look on the top down the boots formed on the shoe last so with shanking you can see our boots are made with a leather shank and so a leather shank is going to be this piece right here and this is going to give you the support in the middle of your foot to the back of your foot and keep that nice and rigid and you can see a shank in a boot so that's what it looks like once it's in the boot once it's shaped it comes over the bottoming you can see as the boots are being bottomed it starts to put some of the layers on for the solenoid so this right here this is a midsole and then uh yeah we'll just keep on going through once we get the midsole on just kind of coming over and you can see they're prepping outsoles okay so the outsole you know what you actually walk on which is step on and uh yeah so those normally get applied this is where some boots do some things other boots go another another direction um but then we start to get outsoles on here and then you can get some video of this this is our this is our soul stitcher so that stitch that goes around the outside of the welt there [Music] fantastic yep so he's going to do two rows of that you can see what it looks like beforehand here once it's kind of prepared for sewing and uh yeah all of our boots are done with what's called a stitch down construction method okay so essentially it's stitching down all the layers together and then seals the water out so it's a little bit more water resistant than like a hand sewn or a goodyear welted construction resin in between there you know it's the stitching the whole thing it's blue yeah so it's going to be a two-part contact adhesive glue and uh that actually does a lot of the work in the adhesion and the stitching is kind of just like the lock that keeps it in place okay yeah so once they're stitched we kind of come over and the boots are healed so you can see it happening over here with chris um so he you know he's gonna put the heel block there uh and then he'll put the cap on so what's that right there yeah so that's gonna be our classic vibram lug outsole so 100 yeah yeah it's the v100 yeah yeah normally people just know it by the lugs so yeah you know your turns yeah so uh we use a lot more of these v100s than most any any other sole here you know we still do a lot of a lot of work boots um we are doing a lot more heritage booths these days but yeah we still are bread and butter that's an interesting upper there that's really nice yeah yeah so that's our new it's one of our newer boots it's called the tanker pro okay um so once the boots have the heels on you can kind of see you can see what they look like here so this is actually a repair so this one's a boot resole so you can see brand new soles with a used upper so then they're going to actually sand this block down to you know produce a shaped heel and you can see over here on the sanding you can get a couple shots of that in the u.s so so that's sanding you see he does a fine sand on that once they're sanded they're going to look something like this you can see the the edges of the leather are raw you know it doesn't have any color there's no ceiling on the edge then they're going to go to our finishing polishing department here so in our finishing department you can see the edge dressings applied and then um this is where they get buffed as well to kind of produce that nice looking edge so yeah that's pretty much it so i mean that's boot making and in what 10-15 minutes so i'll take you over here our boots are serviceable so when the boots need a resole or or further servicing uh here we call it a rebuild we can actually tear them down so there's a little so we don't have any over here right now but um yeah so uh this is kind of our dirty area you can see by the nails on the floor we'll take the soles off and then kind of cut away broken parts of the boots and do rebuilds look at some of the finished products here as well here's a here's a boot rebuild dang it man so so you can see the old the old upper and the brand new lowers here brand new sole i mean it's it's fresh out of the box a lot of guys have them for for a decade two decades depending on how well they take care of them oh you can see some of the boots that are torn down for rebuilds over there so how do you feel like in an office setting walking around all day and these guys you know they're they're they're pretty comfortable i'd say one of the biggest advantages is the insole starts to form to your foot so our boots use an all leather insole i'll show you in here so pretty similar to this this is actually a midsole but this is the kind of leather in which we use for our boots yeah that's really good i know for our heel counters this keeps your heel in a lot of boots like you know uh as soon as a pair of red wings yeah it's going to have no it'll be fine it's going to have like a fiber board or cardboard and heel counter and so so our boots have these solid leather heel counters which are pretty stiff and if you're working in the boots really hold your heels in yeah a lot better and with your fitting options you can narrow it down to like a science yeah yeah and it can accommodate a lot here you can see this is one of those all leather insoles you kind of see the the impression of the um the person's foot on there where their big toe would have been and uh where their heel and it kind of forms around so so what kind of boots you're looking for so i had my eye on this one and i came in the store really thinking about this profile with the huge lug yeah it's really attractive to me with absolutely being able to do anything go anywhere type of vibe yeah the urban logger is kind of our all-around boot it's good for general purpose wear casual wear hiking working it's kind of based off of our taller builder pros hotshot styles okay a little bit shorter top a little bit thinner leather so breaking's a little bit nicer gotcha and then a little bit nicer looking leather as well so you can dress it up and the urban logger comes in both arch profiles that we offer we've got three different last two different arch profiles gotcha so there's the 67 last the 55 last and the h w last the 67 last and the 55 last both have the same arch profile so they both have that taller arch support to them just like this guy here and they both have a little bit taller heel to them with some exceptions like a new boot we just came out with the prospector is our attempt at doing that that higher arch with a little bit lower heel profile okay so it's kind of got the same what we call dogger style or cuban heel but it's a shorter profile like this guy here and then there's the h w last which is this one here so typically is that shorter block heel and you can see on the inside it's kind of simulating like most other you know red wings thursday boots most a little bit more you know mass-produced boots it's got kind of the flat profile through them rather than having that built-in arch support and with that comes a little bit shorter heel and so what are people looking for with this style last rather than the huge arch support i think it's mostly just a matter of aesthetics and personal preference so some people don't like that really tall heel they want the the shorter heel they want more of a casual profile and for some people that arch support is just more than they like more than they can deal with they try on the arch support and it feels bothersome digs into the bottom of their foot so everyone's got different things that work for them based on their foot shape gotcha is it career oriented at all it can be um a lot of you know our roots are kind of in the logging industry forestry wildland so a lot of those guys need that taller heel for the steep incline so they can dig their foot in and for side hills things like that and that arch support as well um helps when you're on your feet all day yeah so you know wildland firefighters they're out there for like 12 to 14 hours a single day cutting lines and and stopping wildlife wildfires um so that arch support just really helps with general foot fatigue yeah i had a job where i needed that for ladders and stuff like that yeah that too yeah you need the taller heel for ladders and um so there's you know some people some jobs you can't have any heal at all and that's where kind of like the wedge tool comes into place gotcha yeah yeah i was looking at some of those options and yeah yeah just completely flat across yeah so we try and have something for for everybody really um but for casual use it's just kind of personal preference like what heel height you like the most um you know do you want that extra arch support aesthetics things like that but the urban logger you can get in this taller heel you can also get it in a little bit shorter uh you know on the h w last with that same kind of woodsman style heel to it still oh i see um but we can we can try some on figure out your size yeah i'm excited let's get in go from there all right i'll have you take a seat over here and we'll get you going all right um so what size do you normally wear so i guess in tennis shoes i'm a 12 but i'm a 10 minute or 11 and a half works for me okay in most my boots okay i bought a set of thursdays and i'm like no i'm gonna do 12. and then later i got another pair that were 11 and a half and i was so happy gotcha with the 11. okay yeah i mean when it comes to sizing we've you know sold enough boots fit enough people that we've got it down to a science really well um you know years past we used to take a whole bunch of tracings and measurements and take that and kind of compare to our last we've got so much data compiled now on our systems that i can we can easily kind of determine where to go from based on what you normally wear so like we know how our boots fit compared to thursday and red wing and whites and a whole bunch of other brands so we can really easily kind of dial it in just from some simple information so if you're wearing 11 and a half in most boots you're probably going to be about an 11 but we can kind of double check see where you're lining up lengthwise and check your width as well okay and we've got some some really good resources on our website for this kind of stuff as well perfect so we've got kind of a diy sizing guide that kind of walks you through doing almost the exact same thing we're going to do for you here in store and we've got our whole try on process and everything else as well but let's start with length so i'll have you stay seated okay go and set your foot on there for me and so yep you're lining up right about an 11. okay so in our diy sizing guide we tell people to it's a basically a paper branch device and we tell them to stand on it and then go down a half size because when you stand up your foot's going to splay forward so if you stand up you're probably going to be about 11 and a half but we know our boots fit about a half size down from branic so we just kind of avoid that completely and you know skip over that and you know you line up right about 11 so you're probably going to be 11 in our boots okay we'll try the other foot too to see if there's any kind of differences left and right and i feel like i wear really thin hanes you know cheap socks gotcha yeah so this foot's a little longer but i don't think it's going to be enough to warrant like any kind of like different sizes or anything most people have i everybody really has slightly different left and right okay you're not proportionate through throughout your whole body and and so you're gonna notice some difference uh maybe even when you try the boot on one might be a little more snug than the other things like that and typically you know the way we look at it is our boots are 100 leather yeah so as you wear that boot and break it in you know the leather lining on the inside the whole boot is going to kind of heat up and it's going to form your foot over time gotcha so we've got 200 plus sizes in the back ready to go that's so cool um so we can get you really close to you know probably some of the best fitting pair you've ever had and then let the leather do the rest of the work from there okay yeah yeah you're going lift your foot for me and then we'll take some measurements here about 10 and a half let's try the other foot and a little bit narrower which is is pretty common you know your longer foot is forward a reason typically a little bit narrower oh i see so you're lining it up pretty close to about 11e so you can grab something free to try on and get your walk in them and yeah and go from perfect yeah yeah so we'll have you try this one on and start from here so when it comes to kind of you know our inventory what we've got to try on in store we mostly just carry the the work boots and use those for fitting because we've just got those three lasts it makes it really easy to figure out yourself so if you get a pair of you know the urban loggers um you can take that size and get pretty much anything else we offer and it should fit and feel pretty much the same yeah yeah so i'm gonna start you in the lower heel first oh okay and i've got the higher heel also just so you can kind of see the difference right so this is just gonna feel similar to kind of you know your red wings things like that so thinking about these guys ordering online what's a advice for that different last or arch support that that you could give them um i would say it it really just kind of comes down to personal preference um you know if you've had orthotics before you know like the little inserts you put in your boots to give you some arch support like that then the higher arch might be a good option for you it is something typically i recommend to someone you know if they've never had boots like this with the higher arch try that first you can get some really cheap like 35 dollar orthotic insoles put them in your boots see if you like that if you don't then you know our high arch definitely isn't going to work for you because our arches are a little bit higher still than most of those okay but it really kind of comes down to personal preference um typically the heel height is kind of the biggest determining factor for most people that's it cool i'll have you kick your foot up here and we'll get you laced up all right so you've got all this extra leather here so we just kind of want to grab that and fold it over like so to a nice little trifold kind of doubles up the leather padding there gives you some protection from the laces keeps them from digging in and one nice clean crease like that just means less you know cracking and holes in the tongue later on down the road as the leather starts to dry out we can replace that tongue but it costs extra so we try to avoid it this will make sure everything's nice and snug pull it tight all right go and stand up wow how are they feeling that's incredible i've been at boots for quite a while now and honestly just right out the gate i haven't felt this before i just haven't that's really good snug on your foot i think that's as close as i've i've been in all honesty that's as close as i've been yeah again it's it's just a matter of you know having the sizes you know we've got over a dozen different widths available from i think we can go all the way down like a size three though we don't have you know as many options that that small but we can go all the way down to like a size three all the way up to a 15. um so basically we can get you into size that most companies don't even bother to make yeah no joke so we can get you as close to a a perfect fit without having to do crazy custom work and charge you a whole bunch extra we try and make it really easy and uh really low risk and not as scary you know to buy five to six hundred dollar boots yeah so that's that's i actually really like that profile to be honest with you yeah it feels really good it's kind of like the profile that you have on now this is the 55 last um so you've got the h w last the heel height looks about the same because you've got that lug heel on there but you have a little more arch then yeah so it's got a little bit taller arch to it i personally really like the uh the silhouette the the profile that that lower heel but i'm also big on the arch support so it's a kind of an internal struggle i always feel like i can imagine i'm ready for a little bit more yeah i could i could definitely handle a little bit more for sure okay yeah just go ahead and walk around in that for a second and i'll go grab the higher arch it's incredible yeah so i think we got the size about right just like the uh the brainek sizing and the chart was telling us about 11e we'll let you try a little bit higher arch to see if you like it yeah this is the 55 last compared to the h w so you can see it's just got that taller heel to it and you can kind of see there's a little bit more arch yeah definitely well if you try those on and we'll get you laced up is there a color that sells more than others you find um uh it's a pretty mixed bag i mean black sells like crazy for work boots um heritage boots i think brown wax flesh is one of our more popular options but we've got a lot of good leather options and um it's honestly kind of tough to to decide because i i at least personally i feel like all of our options um are really nice like at this point for me it's a matter of like which one don't i have yet exactly yeah well that's pretty much where i'm at i don't have a black boot and just having these on i'm digging it man i i mean like i told you i came in for that waxed flesh over there and i'd still probably get that because i just am loving how that looks but it's really opening up my eyes to the fact that i need a set of black boots in my collection i personally i'm really partial to the the rough out yeah so like i think a full rafael boot looks really nice like the black or the walnut are some really good options yeah that walnut roughed out is something that i'm really looking at as well yeah that's going to be like one of the most durable offerings we've got that's seven to eight ounce leather uh which is about an eighth of an inch thick yeah which is much thicker than the industry standard and what how good is that yeah with that that rough out leather too it's uh it's gonna be more abrasion and heat resistant as well okay so it's going to hold up really well in in all conditions i've got a pair of pretty much the same boot and i have beat the heck out of them they're about seven years old now um i just had them rebuilt about six months ago so the lowers are all brand new the uppers are you know the seven year old uppers that's cool and i've i've worn them a bunch hiking backpacking things like that and give them a quick brush and some grease and they look hardly worn how tall are they under 10 inch just like this yeah also opening my eyes up to the fact that i might need a 10 inch i feel like being stuck in the heritage lines i feel like i'm so accustomed to that six inch but just having this on yeah really makes me think because we actually we were hiking not too long ago and found like a rattlesnake and stuff like that so i definitely end up in these travel adventure situations where i could totally see absolutely loving that it's gonna be pretty tough for a snake to get through that seven to eight ounce leather yeah exactly go ahead and stand up give those guys a whirl so that's that higher arch support to it yeah no and that's what i was feeling like i think i would walk out the door with that higher arch support because it doesn't feel out of place at all yeah you can feel it i can already i can definitely feel it so going back to it being basically about personality or whatever you're used to like you're saying if you regularly walk with that extra support then you might want it but yeah and and generally you know i i really like the arch support i try not to sway anyone one one way or the other because different things work for different people um but generally you know that arch support might feel a little strange at first if it's not causing any serious discomfort um it should work out pretty well for you um typically you're going to kind of feel like you're standing on a ladder runner or something when you're okay yeah wow that's a really good feel awesome yeah i'll let you walk in those for a sec and these ones what last was this again that's the 55 last okay that's quite the profile the side profile really can show you the difference this is what i'm walking around in now and that hill and the arch support are fantastic is that is d considered basically middle of the road yeah so d is the standard width that is what most shoes are made in but yeah e is a little bit wider than that okay so you can see this is a chart that we have that shows a lot of the different widths we offer we offer even more than the shows but you can see the length and width or the width is proportionate to the length so at 11 e you're about 10 and a half inches which is pretty much exactly what you're measuring up to at the ball of your foot this shows ball instep and heel but really the ball measurement is what you need for the most part to determine the size okay um and uh so yeah it's a little bit wider than standard but it's kind of one of those in between sizes that most companies don't offer most companies are going to offer like a b a d and a double e so we've got those in between ones i think is closer to what i was wearing when i came in today yeah i think we got you in a good size uppers look good everything looks good so i think 11e is it try and make it as easy as possible so yeah that's exactly what you're lining up to the brand length measurement and the width chart so people at home can use that diy sizing guide and get pretty much the same results as if you came in store yeah i feel really confident about that yeah and for some people if they want to try something on still we also have our try on boot process so you can use that diy sizing guide as a tool it's not necessary if you have a pretty good idea of what you normally wear in red wings whites you know any other brand you can order boot select the try on process and then go to our website fill out a try on request form and we put you in line and we actually send a pair of boots for you to try on in your home perfect so you try it on walk around 15 20 minutes kind of simulates the same exact experience and we have you fill out a questionnaire give us a call and we talk with you over the phone yeah dang it that's that's fantastic yeah customer service from a distance yeah exactly i love that yeah because we we realize we're we're small company we don't have stores all over the country for people to walk in and try on our boots and that online shopping experience can be kind of scary especially when you're paying upwards of five hundred dollars so we we try and cut down that risk factor as much as possible other really nice thing is regardless of how you decide your size we have a buy with confidence program okay so if you just wing it say i'm 11d build me 11d we'll build the boots for you send it to you um and then we have a little paper inside the box that says try them on wear them around for 15-20 minutes if they don't fit call us we'll talk with you do that same fit consultation and we'll take them back that's incredible wow that's awesome yeah fantastic cool so let's as i'm taking these off just give me some pointers on care instructions is the roughed out leather the same process as you do for the smooth or talk us through some of that yeah yeah so rough out for smooth i mean as far as oiling the boot up conditioning the leather waterproofing it's going to be pretty much the same the only difference is that because it's the roughed up leather um eventually it kind of will mat down so if you want to keep that rough rough look to it you can take like a bristle brush or a nylon brush kind of scrub at it to get the hairs to pop up again okay otherwise maintaining the boot is going to be the same as far as like oiling conditioning the leather i typically recommend every three months or so and you can use the nyx grease or oil there's some other really good products out there i recommend anything that's you know beeswax based just like the the stuff we offer so there's a lot of different boot care items you can get that work really well but that's what we typically recommend the grease and the oil that we offer it's going to waterproof and condition the boots really well the grease has more beeswax in it than the oil does so it waterproofs even better than the oil does right but they both kind of do the same thing yeah i saw the i guess the grease in a tub and then a little jar of the wax yeah and so you use those together or one or the other so some people use them seasonally they'll use the the grease or the the lp um during the winter time when they need more waterproofing okay and they'll use the oil during the summertime when they need to soften that boot up and keep it from drying out another kind of determining factor can just be kind of ease of use the oil is really because it's a liquid really easy to just kind of slap on real quick if you've got some time you can do the grease instead okay i typically just do grease all year round i find it's a lot easier for me and it makes much less of a mess i've knocked over bottles of oil too many times to where i just take the grease put a little on my hand and rub it in okay that's just easier for me hey man well thank you so much for all of your time we certainly appreciate it i'm going to be putting my order in it very soon but guys you saw it first hand super easy process the build quality is unmatched i'm here boots on the ground no pun intended pun intended but guys it's an awesome company make sure and check them out online they're going to treat you really good this is the gentleman's journey we hope you like everything that we're putting out until the next video guys god bless you and we'll see you then [Music] um you

Channel: Gentleman's Journey

Views: 10,538

Rating: 4.9268293 out of 5

Keywords: Nicks Boots, Nicks Handmade Boots, Mens Boots, Logging Boots, Work Boots, Leather Boots, Bespoke

Id: ltvrhfHRHwk

Length: 32min 29sec (1949 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021