Richard Stapleman (Pendleton) is a boot maker who makes custom-fitted boots. Stapleman’s was a bull rider for over 20 years and travelled on the rodeo circuit.
Bio
Richard Stapleman is a master boot maker. He builds custom-fitted boots, mostly cowboy boots. A rodeo bull rider for over 20 years, Stapleman was always interested in boots. At night, when others were resting or going out, he would head for the local bootmaker. He hung out at boot and saddlery shops all over the rodeo circuit. When he retired from rodeo in the late 1990s, Stapleman invested in D. W Frommer’s boots. According to Stapleman, Frommer, who maintains a shop in Redmond, Oregon, is the “best boot- and shoe-maker in the world.” Stapleman’s goal was and is to make “good boots that don’t break down”—the kind that used to be available during the heyday of bootmaking, from the 1940s to the early 1960s. He uses old equipment, including shoe lasts, the foot-shaped wooden forms that bootmakers build a boot around. When Stapleman makes his boots, he pays attention to the abnormalities in his customers’ feet; he builds the boot so that any orthotic fits in perfectly. He measures the foot in four places and takes a tracing of the bottom of the foot. Stapleman’s boots begin at $800, and he doesn’t advertise. It takes him a week to make a pair. Stapleman explains that a good boot will support your foot in a way that sneakers will not; he even claims he’d be more comfortable jogging in his boots than in his sneakers.
