Kickstarter Boots

There aren't any, I'm just imagining it. If it wasn't burnished toe I'd choose the light brown in a heartbeat.

For those of you concerned with my decisions (i.e. no one) I decided on the dark brown cap-toe in the Kendal Hydes (middle bottom on the below image). I like the light brown, but figured I'm likely to end up with either oak streets trenches or iron rangers at some point, and in oak street I'd likely get the natural horween, iron rangers copper, so having a nice pair of brown boots ain't gonna hurt none, and will look less like clown shoes than that burnished toe. They put up this comparison image earlier, though I'm pretty sure it's largely digital manipulation, I think it shows I made the right choice (profile of the brogue looks great, though).

I need another pair of non-shell boots like I need another hole in my head, but damn if I'm not tempted.  Do these run TTS? 

So I have a couple updates on the Kendal & Hyde boots, unfortunately not very good. As I had said in another thread, the only one of four factories that could apparently get the sole done correctly was in China, so they ended up being Chinese made. This doesn't really seem to have upset any backers other than myself, so I'm going to leave that there, and I can't get upset because the campaign really doesn't specify that they were to be made in the USA. There is, however, a much larger issue, in that they are apparently not Goodyear Welted, but rather Blake Stitched. Kendal/Hyde has confirmed that all the samples they received were Goodyear Welted, but then they also seem to confirm (in that linked reddit post) that the final production run, unbeknownst to them, was not GYW'd. At this point, I guess you guys win, I'm done with Kickstarter boots, since there seem to be so many unscrupulous manufacturers. I'll put up some pictures of the otherwise very nice boots if anyone is interested, but I know where my boot-money is going from now on.

Yeah it's on the kickstarter campaign. Don't get me wrong, they really are well made and look great, but they've been major production issue after major production issue for these guys. One of the owners is being pretty forthcoming about the very slim likelihood of ever doing another run of them, and another is less forthcoming but putting off the same-ish vibe. I'm going to be keeping an eye on KS and that reddit chain to see how they're going to deal with this. Discounts on their great bags would be enough incentive to turn me around on them right now, but at this point it's just looking like super-expensive Chinese boots -- I know $300 doesn't get you into high-end boots, but once you're priced at the same level as Red Wing, the stakes are pretty high, especially when I can go to DSW and get Chinese boots for ~$100.

Like I said, these are solid, but if the manufacturer was willing to lie about the construction method to the point of sending goodyear welted samples and then Blake-Stitching the production run, who the hell knows what other surprises are inside these boots? I'm just trying to decide if they should be something I keep looking nice or something I beat the crap out of. I'll probably just keep them nice until I can replace them with something like an Oak Street Trench, Whites, or maybe even a pair of Gustin if they look solid. After seeing at least two kickstarter companies get burned in production, though, Big G will need to either provide a lot more details (including the name of a reputable manufacturer) or come in at a really nice price-point to where those details wouldn't hurt. Since this would lock them into Thursday Boot pricing of around $200, which Gustin is not going to do, I'm thinking that I'm more likely to splurge on Alden plain-toes before I crowd-fund another boot.

Hell, I got my Woolrich USA made boots for something like $150 (though that was a deep discount sale), and those are freaking tanks. The wool lining isn't a terribly great idea in the summer, but they're breaking in pretty nicely.