A pair of boots can cost more than a flight to Europe.
Not a typo. Serious western boots run into the hundreds, and the good ones go considerably higher. Exotic leathers can reach numbers that make people laugh out loud the first time they see a price tag.
Now here is the strange part. This is one of the few clothing categories that online retail has not flattened.
Fashion moved online almost completely. Shoes moved online. Even furniture moved online.
Gif by Cavenders on Giphy
Western wear is still, stubbornly, a business of large physical stores where somebody hands you boots and watches you walk in them.
That is not nostalgia. It is a specific set of product characteristics that make the store necessary, and it is one of the clearest examples in American retail of why some categories resist the internet entirely.
Let me show you why.