Amanda Dimova in her local jewelry shop

Amanda Dimova liked to make things as a kid. While her friends aspired to be singing stars or ballerinas, she was inspired by the hands-on creativity that she saw in her parents.

As college students, Amanda’s parents started making homemade children’s shoes out of their apartment. They used scissors and hand-sewn needlework. Like other self-made Americans who we love to champion, they eventually expanded to a 20,000 square foot business in Brownwood, TX.

Vinca Gets Its Start

With a heritage like this, Amanda believed that she too could build a business from the ground up. Though her creative interests began with fashion design, she began making jewelry out of the leather scraps from her parents’ shoe factory. She founded an Austin jewelry company called Vinca, after a flower that her parents used to sew onto their children’s shoes. [Read more…]

Joshua Bingaman, HELM Boots Founder

The Old Man and the Sea. Marlon Brando. Neil Young. Lobster fishing. Growing beards, smoking pipes, riding motorcycles, wearing dirty blue jeans.

These all-American, working-man images have inspired HELM Boots founder Joshua Bingaman to pursue the difficult task of producing a boot that is made entirely in the U.S.A. The quality of his work has earned the partnership of a generations-old shoe factory in Maine. More recently, Nordstrom picked up the brand to sell online and in stores nationwide. [Read more…]