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The Tip is 'Don't procrastinate' For years I've been buying ink jet cartridges from a big box office supply store. These cartridges were made overseas and labeled with the well-known brand of a large American printer company. One I remembered a local store that advertised quality cartridges. I had traveled by this local store hundreds of times but never stopped. This time I stopped at the local store. To my surprise I discovered that they carried the cartridge I needed and it was a Made in USA cartridge. Made in Chicago, to be precise, and it was half the price of the imported ones I had been buying for years. The quality is exceptional and they last longer too. Who knew? After that experience, I make a point to stop at every store I can. By doing so, I've been finding more and more Made in America products. Occasionally the clerks don't know the country of origin; this can be discouraging but finding the origin information yourself isn't difficult I've come to realize. Believe it not, there are actually a number of computers made in the US including laptops made in the USA. When the label is not visibly displayed I use the other Made in America buying tips to help me find Made in US. If the store doesn't carry what you are looking for, use Made in America Secrets to find it and tell the manager about your experience at their store. If enough people are asking for Made in America products stores will begin to carry them. Buying Tip Continued - Read more on Made in America Products by Cobra Rock Boot Cobra Rock Boot Company is a workshop store in Marfa, Texas owned and operated by Logan Caldbeck and Colt Miller. Our boots are handmade in Far West Texas, the same way small-shop cowboy boot makers have been making boots for over a century. They are hand-lasted, hand-welted, and made with American full-grain leather. Although several pairs can be made at one time, a single pair of boots takes nearly two and a half weeks to build. We design and make boots that we want to wear, and we hope you'll love them as much as we do. Due to demand (thank you!) and the small-batch handmade process, there is a wait-list for our boots. You can visit the Store page to see the boot styles and get on our wait-list. Left: Colt's first pair of boots he made while apprenticing in 2004. Photo by Rob Howard, from his story series Greetings from Anywhere. Right: Colt in the airplane hanger where he made custom cowboy boots. Photo by Logan. Left: photo by Guru Kalsa. Top right: photo by Logan. Bottom right: photo by Garrett Cornelison We began our lives in very different places, with almost 2000 miles between us. Logan's childhood home was a one-room cabin built by her mountaineer parents on a small island in British Columbia and Colt grew up cowboying with his father and grandfather on their family ranch in West Texas. We met by chance and fell in love almost eight years ago. Colt was just out of college when he traded guitar lessons for an apprenticeship with a cowboy bootmaker near his hometown. After his apprenticeship, he bought the equipment of two small bootshops that had long since gone out of business and used them to build cowboy boots for family, friends and local ranchers for several years. We began designing boots together as Cobra Rock in the fall of 2011. When we started, it was only the two of us making boots and our wait-list grew quickly. Today Cobra Rock boots are thoughtfully handmade in West Texas with the assistance of a few talented bootmakers using traditional cowboy boot building methods. Colt and Logan still cut and sew every pair of boots in our Marfa, TX workshop. Marfa is a small town in the vast and beautiful high-desert landscape of the Trans-Pecos, Far West Texas. Antelope graze the plains by day and the night sky bursts with stars. It is the place between the sky island of the Davis Mountains and the grand Chisos range in Big Bend that has been called home by Apache families, cavalry troops, wool and mohair ranchers, quicksilver miners, and more recently, a small community of artists, writers and musicians. Like most everyone who comes to Marfa, we fell in love with the landscape, the town and its people. Since starting Cobra Rock, we feel very fortunate to have met many like-minded folks who appreciate and support our work, both locally and around the world. We are grateful for the opportunity to share our efforts with you, whether you visit us in Marfa or online. You can connect with us and follow our story as it continues via our Instagram and blog. Thank you for supporting small-scale handmade-in-America bootmaking! We hope our boots will be your much-used and worn-in favorites. |
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