Stewart Boot Company · History

Why collectors care

Stewart Boot Company was a Tucson custom and small-factory shop whose pairs are measured to the customer’s last. Collectors need the 1940 origin-string conflict kept visible, and they need the 2024 closure report before treating a new pair as factory work.

This page is a bootmaker card. At peak it was a small handmade factory supplying stores, not a one-man bench.

Shop history

The official Stewart history page says Ronny Stewart partnered in 1940 with Romero Boot Company, spent a Korean War period on Temple Street in Los Angeles, and made Tucson the permanent home in 1955. AZPM names the partners Adolfo Romero and Ronnie Stewart. Tucson Sentinel (25 April 2024) instead says the company began in 1940 in León, Mexico, then moved to Tucson in 1955. Those origin strings are not merged.

Victor Borg bought the company in November 1970. The Arizona Daily Star (14 February 2013) described a ten-person South Tucson crew and named O124 as the most popular style, originally designed in 1946. AZPM recorded Borg saying the shop once made about 800 to 900 pairs a month for some 150 stores, later down to about ten accounts.

Tucson Sentinel reported 86-year-old Borg winding down after 53 years, a floor that once held up to 44 workers and 1,000 pairs a month, and a plan to be out by 1 June 2024. Celebrity names in that article are reputation, not pair certificates. A living official URL is not proof the 2024 factory reopened.