3450 Maryam Horsebutt: Development Diary, Part 2

Since we told you the 3450 Horsebutt was coming, the whole team flew to Guangzhou. We spent last week at the workshop settling what this boot is actually made of. Here is what we locked in.

Choosing the leather

The first thing a sample forces you to decide is the leather. On this one there was no argument. Sean and Ray, our boot partner at the workshop, both wanted Maryam.

There are plenty of capable tanneries working horsehide. Maryam's horsebutt still stands apart. It has a texture and a quiet lustre that photographs and video simply do not carry. In person, next to another leather, the difference reads immediately.

Shinki horsebutt is also an excellent leather. We went with Maryam this time because Shinki's shells carry a more specialist character, and because of where the two sit on price.

The sole: VIBRAM, with Cat's Paw

We talked about outsoles for a long time. Plenty of soles beyond VIBRAM are getting attention right now. As boots have moved out of pure heavy-duty and into fashion, brands have started treating the sole as something to look at, not only something that grips and resists wear, and customers have clearly responded to that.

That trend is impossible to ignore. But what an outsole has to do first is the thing VIBRAM does at a price that stays reasonable, so VIBRAM sits under the ball of the foot. And because this is a new version of the 3450, we put Cat's Paw at the heel to give it a different feel.

Running two different brands on one boot, one at the forefoot and one at the heel, is not something you see often. We think two makers on a single pair has a charm of its own.

Brass hardware

The leather and the sole were more or less agreed. The one we kept turning over was the hardware.

The conclusion first: the 3450 Horsebutt will use brass hardware, so that the boot ages across all of itself and not only in the leather.

We wanted brass on the first sample too. The workshop's schedule and the lead time on the material would not line up, and we had to let it go. On this trip we worked the calendar through with Ray and set a target of late September for the brass parts. Barring anything major, brass hardware will be on the boot when it launches.

If the response is good, we would like to bring brass to every one of our engineer boots and widen the choice. We genuinely hope we get to. It would close the one gap we have always felt in our standard engineer boots.

Price and quantity

Neither is settled yet. What Ray and we did agree on is this: price it as reasonably as we can, and start with a small run.

Said plainly, from a business point of view this is not a product we are launching to make money on. From the point of view of building the brand, and of talking to the people who like it through the things we make, it is a first step toward a new kind of value we can offer.

We are counting the days until launch. A lot of you have written to us first, asking when the horsebutt lands, some of you offering to buy on the spot if we would just name a price. That means a great deal, and it makes the work of running this shop feel worth doing. We will be back soon with the boot itself.

More on where our boots go after this one in Guangzhou, Ray Kwok, and Where Our Boots Go Next, and you can see the standard 3450 engineer boot in tea-core cowhide any time.