Boot maker from Italy brings business to Kansas

EUREKA, Kan. (KSNW) – Sam Vasta is a bootmaker from Italy who brought his business to Eureka. He has a workshop outside his home where he makes shoes, accessories, handbags, and boots.

The dream sparked when he was a kid. Vasta says he always loved beautiful objects.

“When I see something that I really like, I wonder how it’s made and if I could make it,” Vasta said. “I always liked to work with my hands. I think I always had the urge to make things.”

He recalls early memories of going to the market with his mom and being captivated by the smell of leather and the shape, color, and styles of shoes.

“I just find that beautiful,” Vasta said. “So, I think it’s stuck with me ever since.”

His parents immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. Vasta went to school and got his master’s in history, but his dream remained. He returned to Europe, did an apprenticeship for five years, and then started his own business.

Vasta had thoughts of bringing his business to the U.S., but it happened much quicker than he expected.

“Everything was precipitated by the earthquake that happened in 2009 and made us decide very quickly that we had to kind of reinvent ourselves to do something because we had lost our business and the house. We had to think quick and decide what we were going to do next after we regained our breath. The whole area driving through really seemed like an apocalyptic war zone. We would go by small towns that had been destroyed during World War II by the Germans and now were re-destroyed by the earthquake. You could see houses and buildings that had just collapsed and debris, just like if you had bombed the place.”

Vasta says the situation was surreal, as they lost their livelihood overnight. He and his wife moved back to Rochester, where his family was. Then, they moved to Vermont, but it was expensive. Three years later, they moved to Kansas. Vasta says there were a few main reasons they picked Kansas.

“One of them was that I was always thinking that I wanted to do cowboy boots, but the area, northeast, was not really a cowboy boots area, so I thought that the southwest would be the perfect area to look into. And so the low cost of living in Kansas, we started looking at possibilities, and we realized that Kansas had some of the lowest cost of living in the 50 states, and so that sort of made up our mind.”

Right now, he is splitting his time between driving for Uber and making shoes.

“To make the transition work, I don’t want to jump right into it and deprive ourselves of an income, so I am still driving for Uber while I wait and see how things develop and try to transition as easy as possible from one thing to another. As soon as more orders come in and I get them done, the sooner I can transition back into what I do.”

He and his family have lived in Kansas for three years, and he says it was a culture shock.

“When we moved to Kansas and people were holding doors open and saying hello, and even when you’re driving in the streets, people do a hello gesture, people that you wouldn’t necessarily even know. And so I, at first, we were amazed and surprised by this,” Vasta said.

His long-term goal is to have a shop in town where people can come and see his work. His website is still in progress, but he can be contacted by email .

“Unlike most businesses that you have today, where you order today, you get it tomorrow, this is a very much more old-fashioned style business,” Vasta said. “It’s the slow food of commerce, if you will. Then, they have to be, of course, patient. This is not a stock business as far as the boots are concerned. I don’t plan to have stocked items that I can ship out. It’s just very much a custom business. And in the meantime, I also do accessories.”

Vasta is chasing his dreams no matter where they lead him.

“If you pursue those that need, you have to follow it wherever it takes you,” Vasta said.

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