I’ve known Thursday Boot Company co-founder Connor Wilson for years now—he’s a great guy in general to grab a drink with, and quite excellent at talking boots shop. But this conversation at the Thursday Boots HQ in New York City was actually the first time I ever even spoke with Connor’s co-founder Nolan Walsh.
The joke has always been that Thursday Boot Company’s Connor Wilson keeps his co-founder Nolan Walsh trapped in a factory working on the product. Turns out that joke actually true—except Nolan is the one very eagerly choosing to imprison himself.
That certainly hasn’t lessened since Thursday opened its own in-house manufacturing facility in North American bootmaking capital Leon Mexico—just 11 years after Thursday launched a Kickstarter campaign to try and sell a few boots. Pretty wild stuff.
Nolan and I pretty much cover everything in this one—the full version of the Thursday origin story that had more twists and turns than I expected, how they develop product and manage production in factories on multiple continents around the idea of supply chain centricity, Nolan’s quality control mania, their online marketing you may or may not have seen, and how in the world, after more than a decade in business, their core product is still only $199.
And yes, of course, The Poron Question. Obviously we did that.
Here’s Nolan Walsh, co-founder and a whole lot of other things at Thursday Boots, on the Shoecast.
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