A Boot Collector Feature

Stallion Boot Co.

A 23-year-old chemistry student borrowed $2,000, teamed up with two partners during the Urban Cowboy boom, and built a family bootmaker whose boots have walked runways in fashion capitals and onto the feet of Madonna and Bob Dylan.

The Story

Pedro Muñoz was 23 and studying chemistry when he pivoted into bootmaking in 1980, founding Stallion Boot Co. with partners Jose Gallegos and Plutarco Rodriguez on just $2,000 in borrowed capital, right as the Urban Cowboy boom was pulling Western wear into the mainstream. Muñoz had grown up on a ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico, and his bicultural upbringing between Mexico and El Paso shaped both his design sensibility and the international reach the company built early on.

By 2002, Stallion had been named among the Top 25 Boot Makers in the country, and its boots had found their way onto fashion runways in style capitals well beyond Texas, all while staying a genuine family operation — Pedro's former wife, Annette, serves as Vice President, and their adult children have taken on roles in the business as well. More recently, Stallion partnered with the newer direct-to-consumer brand Tecovas on a limited-edition collaboration boot, built on Stallion's own narrower last in American alligator with a 13-inch cowhide shaft, putting a 45-year-old family bootmaker in front of a much younger audience.

What They're Known For

Stallion works in meticulously sourced leathers from around the world, including a range of exotic skins, finished by hand to what the company calls a flawless standard on every detail. Production stays deliberately small, around 40 to 50 pairs a week, built by craftspeople with decades of experience, some of whom have brought their own family members into the trade the same way Muñoz once entered it himself. Pedro has described his own role with more modesty than the boots might suggest: "I am only the conductor. I design the boot, but our employees bring them to life."

Notable Wearers

On the Tour

A factory tour puts the bootmakers themselves in view, and the leather room alone is worth the visit — a dizzying assortment of both common and genuinely rare hides on hand, the kind of selection few shops this size can match. One wall holds a photo of the crew from decades past, and given how long Stallion has been in business, more than a few of the faces in it are no longer around, a quiet reminder of just how much history is behind the boots on the shelves. It's the kind of detail that backs up what the reputation already says: the quality here is genuinely among the best in the industry.

Tooled Work

A tooled pair from the TW Collection, also featured in our tooled boot gallery.