I remember my first “real” pizza.
High Quality > Fast Fashion
While walking through the streets of Rome, Italy, I stumbled upon a small restaurant owned by an older Italian woman. Her sun kissed hands told her story well: she had been raised in the hills of Tuscany, on her family’s farm, where she tilled the soil and grew fresh vegetables, dripping with crisp flavors you can only find in the heart of Italy. I remember taking the first bite of pizza – it was unimaginable, and I felt strange even calling “pizza,” because it tasted like a completely different dish. It wasn’t anything like the fast food or frozen pizza I had previously enjoyed in the states.
I looked at the pizza, attempting to process what was different. I could literally taste every ingredient in each bite: the basil & red tomatoes she had picked from her garden, the burrata she had bought from her neighboring farm, the parmesan sprinkled on top... and then it hit me! The fresh ingredients prepared with her two hands, combined with her meticulous attention to detail, was what set her pizza apart. This woman had woken up every day, for most of her life, to harvest sun-ripened vegetables and perfect her recipes; and this was anything but fast or frozen.
Today, we’d like to take you through the preparation of a “gourmet dish” of our own: our best-selling Protege boot.
Let’s start with the ingredients:
Vegetable Tanned Leather:
Vegetable tanning takes WAY longer (3+ weeks verses 5 hours) than Chrome tanning—which is what most of our competitors do. Chrome tanning is not only terrible for our environment, but it’s bad for our bodies and the workers who work with it. Vegetable tanning not only uses ingredients from nature like walnuts and quebracho bark, but it allows the leather to develop a rich and unique patina with wear over time.
Cork/Leather Shavings Midsole:
This blend creates an extremely comfortable footbed that molds specifically to your foot as you wear it, creating a custom fit.
Goodyear welt:
A Goodyear welt is a traditional cobbler process of adhering the outsole of the shoe to the midsole. Rather than cementing (gluing) the outsole, which is most common in shoe manufacturing these days, a Goodyear welt means the outsole is stitched to the midsole, allowing for a more durable and longer lasting boot, because they can easily be re-soled by any cobbler…or even by us!
YKK back zipper:
Our YKK zipper is the highest quality zipper you can find and allows for easy on and off access, so you don’t need to re-lace your boots every time you wear them, and you’ll be wearing them a lot!
Organic dyes & finishes:
All our dyes are made of organic ingredients, sourced from nature, making them non-toxic and safe for you, our cobblers, and our environment.
The Human ingredient:
Every shoe, stitch, and detail is crafted by hand, by someone like you!
Combine our natural ingredients with the love and handmade quality that goes into every pair of BED|STÜ boots, and you have our version of the gourmet Italian pizza, a boot made with the highest quality ingredients by our top chefs. Once you take a bite, or try it on, all other boots will pale in comparison.
Bon Appétit!
