Meet Cody’s Scott Emmerich, Master Bootmaker To The Stars

CODY — His boots aren’t just made for walking. They’re made for strutting and swaggering around Western style.

Bootmaker Scott Wayne Emmerich in Cody has made some of the world’s most legendary boots.

He’s got a client list that reads like a Who’s Who of the rich and famous, ranging from his first customers — Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone — to more recent clients like Reba McEntire, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Costner, Kirstie Alley, Lee Iacocca, Whoopi Goldberg, and more.

“I’ve got 70,000-some happy customers,” Emmerich told Cowboy State Daily. “What I do pride myself on is doing completely handmade boots with no shortcuts. That’s what I’m all about. The best of the best. I don’t buy any material unless it’s the finest.”

And that’s how he sold a pair of boots called The Mexican for an eye-popping $79,000. And no, that’s not a typo.

“My partner, Jerry, was a Mexican coin dealer,” Emmerich said. “So, I went into his safe and I took coins that went way back to where they weren’t even shaped as a coin, they were by weight. And then I brought a few more toward the future, and I designed images around them.”

Those images told stories from different eras from about 1500 on up to the Mexican Revolution.

It took 700 hours of work to set the rare silver and gold coins permanently into the leather. Emmerich first had the coins set in sterling silver, so their values wouldn’t be degraded from being set into the boots. Then he designed scenes around each coin that related to the era in which those coins were in use.

The incredible artwork ultimately gained a lot of notoriety.

“They got displayed, and photographed, and showed, and then I sold them,” Emmerich said. “The person I sold them to gave me $75,000 for them, and then he donated them to the Smithsonian.”

The Boots That Inspired Him

Not all of the boots Emmerich has made are as complicated as The Mexican. Some are quite simple, kind of like the first pair of cowboy boots he himself once bought 45 years ago in Florida.

Emmerich spotted the boots on a guy who was crossing the street and was so taken with them he chased the guy down to ask where he’d gotten them.

When he learned they were from El Paso, Texas, that’s where he headed next.

“Back in the day there were only like five boot (makers). There were Tony Lama boots, Larry Mahan, Lucchese, and that’s about all you could get,” Emmerich said. “There were a few mom-and-pop shops, too.”

So Emmerich went from one mom-and-pop to the next, searching for boots like those he’d seen on a stranger in Florida.

Once he’d found the boots he wanted, he landed with them in Los Angeles. Over time, he thought of ways to kick things up a notch with his custom El Paso boots, adding colored wingtips first, then carving some artwork into them.

That’s when he found the tables had suddenly turned. Now he was the guy crossing the street getting flagged down by strangers.

“People were like, ‘Where’d you get your boots, where’d you get your boots,’” Emmerich said. “So, I decided that could be something I could do with my life.”

He found a partner to help him start a small shop, and things just kept going up from there, until finally, he had his very own shop.

“I started designing, and I surrounded myself with the finest bootmakers at the time to come and work with me,” he said. “And they did.”

It didn’t take long after that for Hollywood to find Emmerich. Things really took off then, and they’ve been going ever since, even as Emmerich has begun to slow down, only making custom orders and art pieces that he personally wants to make.

“I used to make boots and sell to other stores as well,” he said. “But it just got to be too much.”

Boots That People Want To Be Buried In

Emmerich can put just about any concept onto a boot, and he has engineered some creative construction methods that help people solve footwear problems, while still looking good.

“I can do whatever a customer wants,” he said. “Arch supports, broken feet, bunions, calves — it doesn’t matter. I’ve done a lot of research and engineered a lot of stuff.”

Each boot starts with a mold of the customer’s feet so that the boot that will fit like a glove.

“I cater to their needs to make them happy customers,” he said. “And I make a piece of footwear that’s not just comfortable. It’s going to last a long time.”

And it will be a boot that makes a statement — their statement. Nothing is too weird for a boot in Emmerich’s eyes.

“I don’t care if it’s Motley Crew’s boot, I don’t care if it’s a boot for Day of the Dead,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s a boot for religion or presidential seals — I’ve done just about everything and anything. I mean, I’ve done 70,000 designs. It’s whatever you want. It’s your boot, and I love it.”

And that’s the attitude Emmerich has no matter who the customer is. It might be someone famous like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had silver inlaid into a pair of boots for a Christmas present, or it can be someone who no one else has heard of at all.

“I have made boots for people who got buried in them,” Emmerich said. “Because I made them their dream boots. And that’s what really turns me on is helping people get their dream boots.”

In fact, the more challenging a person’s dream boot is, the more interesting and fun making the boot will be.

“Challenges are what I like,” Emmerich said, gesturing toward a set of boots that feature a sparkly fringe of crystals. They shimmer and sway and move hypnotically when a person walks in them.

“This is my Star Dust Collection,” he said. “Each stitch pattern is different, and I’m doing eight of them. Then I’m setting them with Swarovski crystals in different color. I just like to come up with different concepts.”

From Vision To Reality

Not all the boots Emmerich has made are orders from customers. Some were just because he had a vision he wanted to turn into reality.

Like his Fourth of July boots, which took four years to make, working on them on and off between other projects. They contain artwork depicting everything he likes about America — flags, fireworks, Mount Rushmore, soldiers. Everything that says Independence Day.

Or there’s the boots he made that have a replica of the gun Clint Eastwood used in the movie, “Pale Rider.”

“I borrowed a gun from the Art Museum, the Buffalo Bill, and I had a replica made in sterling silver by Best Cast back east,” Emmerich said. “And see here, the barrel even spins. You can load it and go.”

Then there’s the boot that features several of the Spanish crosses he saw at museums in Spain, along with fantasy butterflies that fly up to the heavens.

“Every cross is different, and there are 110 colors on this boot,” Emmerich said. “And there’s some scroll work to it. I call it Peace on Earth.”

There’s a pair of rodeo boots, there’s a pair of silver cross boots, and there’s a pair of Our Lady of Guadalupe boots with 24-karat gold relief all around it.

“I wasn’t messing around,” Emmerich said, smiling. “And I’ve been knocked off many times, but she came out the way I like her. “

The Next Pair Is Always His Favorite

One pair of boots he recently finished — which have already sold for $32,000 — commemorate the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park.

“I took the animals, the original gates, flowers, memorable parts of the park — and (the boots) are each different,” Emmerich said. “The flags of the time, the animal prints to the animals, and I designed all of that into one pair. And then I gave them five stars.”

All the images are hand-tooled and carved on a sheet of leather first. They’re painted and then formed into boots. The process took about two years for that particular pair of boots.

“All of my boots start off with master sketches,” Emmerich said. “It’s kind of like a blueprint before you start, because you can change your mind on pencil and paper, but you can’t change your mind once you start on the leather.”

Once the boot is formed, there’s a little bit of re-shaping to do, to make sure that the images haven’t slipped during the process of forming the boot.

“When you form it, it gets a little brutal,” Emmerich said. “You beat it up a little bit.”

Once he’s satisfied that everything is perfect, he puts a customized seal on the boots that he developed himself.

Emmerich’s attention is already on a new challenge now that the Yellowstones are finished. It’s a pair of boots for the upcoming Western Design Exhibit and Sale in Jackson Hole on Sept. 5, which is how he found Cody in the first place. He came to one of the Western Design conferences that was in Cody, and fell in love with the town.

That convinced him to buy a place in Cody, where he could continue making boots in a location he feels is one of the best places on earth.

Emmerich is looking forward to the next Western Design conference.

“When I compete I always get a lot of ribbons,” he said with a sly smile. “And this one is going to be pinup girls. My sketches for that one are all done.”

That means the artwork is already getting tooled into a piece of fine leather, along with eye-popping colors and all of the surprises that come with every one of his boots.

That boot, and everyone before, have all been labors of love these past 45 years, small stepping stones in a career that has taken him to places he never dreamed possible. From Florida to Texas to Los Angeles, and, finally to Cody, his home of choice for a craft he plans to do until the day he dies — with his cowboy boots on.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.