Boot Manufacturer
Old Gringo
Ernie Tarut and Yan Ferry started Old Gringo after a 1999 WESA meeting. The factory is in León. Headquarters later moved from San Diego toward the Fort Worth Stockyards. Ferry also co-founded Liberty Boot Company, a different house. Fashion inlays do not replace a León country-of-origin mark.
Related: Liberty Boot Company
Why collectors care
Old Gringo is a León fashion-western manufacturing house founded in 2000. Collectors meet inlay, metallic, and crystal pairs and need the León factory plus a way to keep the house separate from Liberty Boot Company.
Taxonomy here is manufacturing company. Yan Ferry later also co-founded Liberty Boot Company. Same person, different house.
Company history
Cowboys & Indians (23 June 2020) records that Ferry approached Ernie Tarut at WESA in 1999, that a factory started within nine months on a handshake, and that the first line had ten styles, with growth around 2005. “Largest handmade-boot factory in the world” is a company claim.
Cowboys & Indians (10 January 2022) and a PR Newswire (12 December 2022) describe a headquarters move from San Diego to the Fort Worth Stockyards, a first flagship planned for the first quarter of 2022 at 140 E. Exchange Avenue, Suite 305, and a later HQ site at 2322 N. Main. Production remains in León, with apparel expansion.
Process-count language conflicts: current About copy has printed 225 steps while 2022 C&I and PR copy printed 275. Caption the dated source.
Known for
León fashion-western factory; not Liberty Boot Company