ACME BOOT CO

During the Great Depression, the father and son team of Jessel and Sidney Cohn started Acme Boot Co in 1929 to manufacture cheap kids shoes which sold for 40 to 50 cents a pair.

In 1935, Jessel Cohn returned home from a trip to Texas with a pair of cowboy boots that cost $65 – nothing to sneeze at in the 1930s. Cohn carefully studied the boots to see how they were made, and decided they could produce the same boots on an assembly line, allowing them to sell the boots for a better price. The Cohns started making only cowboy boots, and lots of em.

By the mid-1930s, Acme went after the Western movie fan market by making cheap replica boots of those worn on the big screen by the golden gang of four – Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans .  America was crushing on cowboy boots, and Acme was happy to crank them out.

In 1949 Acme Boot Company commissioned Lucchese Boot Company to build the State Boot collection for an advertising campaign. It took Lucchese an amazingly short four years to build the entire collection. Each boot features unique and exact colors for the states flag, capital, bird, flower and state commodity

From the 1940s to the mid-1980s, Acme was the world’s biggest maker of cowboy boots, delivering the wild West in a box to rebels, ranchers and weekend cowboys.

In 1993, Acme moved their operations to Puerto Rico, prompting a protest by 300 long-time Acme Boot Co. employees who stood in a torrential rainstorm and burned dummies of Acme management in effigy – and a pile of flaming Acme boots.

Acme is now part of Warren Buffet’s Double H Boots brand, and as of yet, no employees have burned Buffet in effigy.