A Boot Collector Feature
Alvaro Rivera's Houston shop ships custom exotic-leather boots to clients from Argentina to Ethiopia, backed by five generations of family bootmaking.
Al's Handmade Boots operates out of 2323 Fannin Street in Houston, run by Alvaro Rivera, who the shop describes as carrying forward five generations of family bootmaking. Rivera has more than three decades of experience in the trade and has built a clientele that reaches well beyond Texas — the shop counts customers across the United States, Mexico, Germany, Canada, Central America, Argentina, Spain, and Ethiopia, among other places, a reach unusual for a single-location custom shop.
Custom handmade boots built around fine cowhides and a deep bench of exotic skins — ostrich, alligator, buffalo, crocodile, elephant, lizard, python, and shark among them. The shop bills itself as a family business built to satisfy sophisticated tastes, and its international customer base backs that up.
A five-generation family shop with a client list that spans the globe.
Pairs from smaller, custom, or long-closed makers rarely come up for sale, so this search may not find anything. It’s worth checking back now and then.