Jose Luis Sanchez

History

Jose Luis Sanchez was an El Paso bootmaker profiled at age 62 in Joe Nick Patoski's June 2002 ‘Next 25’ list for Texas Monthly, running Champion Boots. Bootmaking ran in his family: his great-great-grandfather had come from León, Mexico, and his father ran a boot-and-shoe repair shop. His shop built boots for working cowboys, with double leather soles, a heavy outer vamp, and a handmade leather stacked heel, priced from $250 and taking about forty-five days.

His own company page says he graduated from Texas Western College in 1963 with a degree in accounting, and while still in school started a mail-order business he named Champion Boot Company; with his wife Norma he specialized in buckaroo boots for working cowboys. Over roughly 61 years in the trade, he worked as production manager for Justin Boots and for Acme–Dan Post, and did contract work for Tony Lama, Bowman Wilson Boot Co., Cowtown Boots, and Mustang Boots. Sources differ on the shop's street number: the 2002 profile and a Better Business Bureau listing give 505 S. Cotton, while his own later page gives 503 S. Cotton.

A 2015 Texas House resolution says that when the founder's grandson, Jose Luis Sanchez, joined the business in the 1960s, he arranged subcontract work for other El Paso houses, including Tony Lama and Nocona, and that the company opened an Interstate 10 store in the 1970s. He is a different person from Yldefonso Sanchez and Jose Lucas Sanchez, earlier generations of the family, and he is not connected to Caboots, the later ‘Champion Attitude’ house run by Joey and Priscilla Sanchez.