A Boot Collector Feature

Kemo Sabe

A Thanksgiving Day launch in a Colorado ski town grew into the kind of luxury Western retailer that sells El Paso's finest boots to a completely different mountain-town crowd.

The Story

Kemo Sabe was founded by Tom and Nancy Yoder, who opened their first shop in Snowmass Village, Colorado, on Thanksgiving Day in the early 1990s. Three years later, the business moved to a well-known corner storefront in Aspen, and it's since grown into additional locations including Vail and Las Vegas. In 2015, the company launched its own branded goods line, Kemo Sabe Grit, for hats, bags, and leather items made domestically in Basalt, Colorado. Around 2021, Kemo Sabe acquired J.B. Hill Boot Company, the El Paso bootmaker, bringing an actual boot shop in-house for the first time — J.B. Hill still operates under its own name and team, and it's the maker behind the Kemo Sabe Grit boot line specifically.

What They're Known For

Kemo Sabe built its name as a luxury Western outfitter known especially for personalized service and custom hat-shaping alongside a curated selection of high-end Western boots. It's one of the more prominent places outside Texas where a customer can walk in and buy genuine El Paso craftsmanship, including Lucchese Classics and Rios of Mercedes, informing the boots' reputation in ski towns and destination markets far from where they're actually made. Since the J.B. Hill acquisition, it's also become an El Paso bootmaker in its own right, not just a showcase for other makers' work.