People who want to sport a Horned Frog on their boots now have more choices.
Nocona, a unit of Justin Brands that began producing college-branded boots in 2009 and now carries 40 schools, suddenly has company in the marketplace.Gameday, a startup led by a designer for the fashionable Old Gringo Western line and the owner of Austin's Allens Boots, jumped into the college boot business last fall. It says it has signed up 36 schools.The companies offer similar products, but their approaches and prices vary broadly.Nocona recently added a second shift at its El Paso factory to handle the College Boots line, which saw sales quadruple last year, brand manager Monte Nelson said.He expects to carry 50 schools by year's end, and he's getting ready to roll out a line of boots with full color logos in the next few weeks -- a variant of Nocona's conservative, mainstay tan boot with black logo.The tan boot, aimed at first-time buyers with its conservative styling, retails for $199, and the "color top" version will sell for $249. The full-quill ostrich boots sell for about $460.Gameday co-owner Marsha Wright, who teamed with Allens owner Steve Greenberg on the venture, expects to have up to 64 schools soon. For bigger or more popular schools like Texas Christian University, Gameday offers choices of base colors and design.While big-name schools populate both companies' lineups, Wright has also gone after smaller schools like Tarleton State, and she's even interested in selling boots bearing sorority logos. Her boot retails for $399.Nocona touts Made in America.Gameday produces its boots at a Mexican factory that Old Gringo has worked with before.Nocona's boots sell evenly to men and women. Gameday, with its design flourishes, sells about two-thirds to women."We started this thing to increase domestic production," said Nelson, a Texas Tech graduate. "We have filled up the El Paso factory with College Boots.""I'm not afraid to make the boots, because I think we can sell them," said Wright, also a Tech graduate.Keeping things simpleBefitting the history of the Fort Worth company and its current owner, Berkshire Hathaway, Nocona has grown its college line conservatively, starting with TCU, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech in 2009 and moving to 18 schools in 2010.Nelson has eschewed suggestions to move quickly into NASCAR and other licensed lines -- "let's make sure this thing works first" -- and kept things simple by focusing on the tan boot.When teams such as the University of Houston start winning, as the Cougars did last fall, and boot demand surfaces, Nelson said he can reschedule El Paso production to fit them in."We're able to be really quick to market," said Nelson, who has brought on 20 unpaid interns at various colleges to help promote the boots and has deployed Justin's social media team.Gameday's manufacturing is more complicated than Nocona's, and Wright acknowledges that her costs are higher than if she had gone with simpler options on each boot.She offers two styles of TCU boots, for example. One version comes in black with purple stitching, "TCU" on the toe, "TCU" and the Frog logo on the uppers and the Frog by itself on the heel. The second boot is brown, with the Frog on the toe, "TCU" and the Frog on the uppers, and the "Go Frogs" logo on the heel."It's difficult, but obviously it works," Wright said.Availability issuesAmong Western retailers, Nocona's boots are more widely available than Gameday's. Nocona's are sold in North Texas by Cavender's, Shepler's, Baskins, David's Western, Foster's, Teskey's, Fincher's and Luskey's, Nelson said. Gameday's are available at Cavender's, Maverick Western Wear, Teskey's, Shepler's and Pinto Ranch, Wright said.Nelson, like Wright, is pursuing college bookstores, and last fall he got the $199 women's boot into the University Co-op, the nonprofit University of Texas store.But he hasn't gotten the men's boot in there because the co-op has sold a custom Longhorns boot made by the Lucchese Boot Co. for the last three years, with all proceeds going to the UT student government.The co-op sold nearly 600 pairs of the Lucchese boots last year and has donated as much as $70,000 to UT student government over three years, said Brian Jewell, the co-op's vice president of marketing. The boots retail for $349 in leather and $2,500 in ostrich.Jewell said the co-op has sold 75 to 80 pairs of Nocona boots since it started selling them Oct. 1 in Fort Worth and its main location in Austin, and he has reordered three or four times.He plans to roll the boots out to all the co-ops this spring. "They've done well," he said.But the co-op doesn't have immediate plans to begin selling Nocona's men's boot, Jewell said."Some of it honestly is floor space, and we have a very developed business with the Lucchese boot," he said.Nocona's bestsellers are Ohio State, Texas, Texas A&M, Kentucky and Arkansas. Gameday's top sellers are Alabama and LSU, Wright said.Gameday hasn't secured licenses for Texas or Oklahoma, both in the Nocona lineup."I get requests daily and e-mails" from prospective customers, Wright said. On UT, she said, "they want to see a track record."Neither Nelson nor Wright professes to having a sense of how large the market is for college logo boots."It's big," Nelson said."Oh, heavens no," Wright said. "I don't ever think about that."Scott Nishimura, 817-390-7808Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
