Legendary Custom Boot Maker Continuing to Hone His Craft
Montrose Bootmaker Has New Blood at The Helm
by Marene Gustin
When native Houstonian Chris Liggett, 38, was a teen, he was very artistic. He enjoyed drawing and making cutouts from leather and metal. And, he loved cowboys and cowboy boots.
“I was pretty creative,” Liggett says. “And my parents pushed me in that direction.”
His talent paid off when out of high school he had a mentor who taught him to make custom cowboy boots, a hobby he kept up for 16 years as he worked in oil and gas field. In 2015, he went looking for a new direction in life and met Mike Kuykendahl, who had just moved his Tejas Custom Boots, opened in 1984, from its original Westheimer Road location to a larger shop just down the street. Liggett went to work for Kuykendahl with the understanding that when he retired he would sell Liggett the store. And that’s what happened about a year later.
“It’s hard,” admits Liggett. “Owning your own business is a lot of work, and this is a dying business, we’re trying to turn that around.”
Under Kuykendahl, the shop was finishing seven boots a month, sometimes taking eight months to complete an order. Now, Liggett says, with five book makers working for him, they complete five to ten boots a week.
“We can turn an order in about 30 days,” he says. “I want to be able to turn out forty boots a month. The faster the turnaround the more money to pay bills and to keep prices low. I tell people we’re a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost of other custom bootmakers.”
Liggett and his business partner spent a lot of time traveling Texas to towns known for bootmakers and ordering custom boots. Five or six months later, if they liked the boots they got, they would offer the bootmaker to come work for them. A tedious process, but about the only thing they could do.
“A lot of the master bootmakers are ageing and dying off,” he says. “It’s getting harder and harder to find good ones.”
With doing all the customer service and running the business, Liggett doesn’t have much time to actually make boots, but he does enjoy designing the occasional boot. And, he also used to hunt alligators with Kuykendahl for skins. He doesn’t have time for that anymore either, so he buys gator skins, a popular material for western boots, from other Texas hunters. It helps the state economy and aids in the conservation process. Since only the belly is used, boot makers can only get about two pair from one skin.
Of course the store has a wide variety of skins to choose from, as well as different styles and heel heights. Pretty much they can make just about any kind of boot you want, custom made to fit your feet.
The next step for Liggett is expanding the business even more, but that means finding more bootmakers.
“There aren’t a lot of young guys like me going into the trade,” he says. “Our next step will be to hire some young people as apprentices and teach them boot making.” And how will he find them? On social media, of course. “I’ve actually had people reach out to me on Instagram and ask about how they can learn this skill.”
Although, he may have an apprentice already waiting.
“My seven year old, Wesley, when a teacher asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, he always says a bootmaker,” Liggett says with a laugh.
Tejas Custom Boots
415 Westheimer Rd.
713.524.9860
Website: tejasboots.com
Instagram: tejascu
Facebook: facebook.com/TejasCustomBootsCo
Twitter: instagram.com/TejasCustomBoots