Dustin Culpepper, a former Lake Travis High School football coach, helped lead his team to the school’s first Texas state championship in 2006. However, after meeting his wife, Eva Diaz, who lived next door, he gave football the boot—
literally.

The couple began selling handmade boots at trade shows while living in League City outside Houston. Eva said she used money from her babysitting job to grow their business.

Although Eva is from Lake Travis, she said some family members, including her cousin Victor Diaz, reside in Leon, Mexico. Victor produces all of the handmade boots featured at Texas Outlaw Boot & Fashion, and other family members make wallets and belts that are also sold in the stores, Eva said.

Dustin Culpepper and Eva Diaz, shown here with their children, own the local business that offers three locations in the Austin area.[/caption]

“I could have kept coaching, but I was so impressed with the workmanship and the sheer quality of the boots that Eva’s cousin was making [that we went into business],” Culpepper said.

In 2012, the Culpepper-Diaz family relocated back to Austin where they opened their first boot and accessories store in September 2013 by renting a booth in the Austin Marketplace on North Lamar Boulevard. Eva said the business still operates at the marketplace on weekends.

“We started with a single 10-foot-by-10-foot booth four years ago, and now we have double that,” Eva said.

The couple also sold boots during the week inside The Oasis restaurant.

In 2014 they opened a warehouse space in Lakeway with another tenant to offer their products, adding clothing sales into the mix, she said. The family conducts warehouse sales from this location along with an Oasis, Texas site they opened in August 2015 in The Design Lab, a store concept founded by Austin entrepreneur Linda Asaf. The Design Lab features products created by various local designers.

Eventually, Culpepper and Eva purchased The Design Lab store from Asaf but still maintain the site's premise as a proving ground for new designers as well as a site for the couple's leather products and clothing.

The family includes four children, who Culpepper said enjoy helping out in the business. He said his young daughter is “a natural” at sales.

“My kindergartener will sell you a boot,” he said. “A kid will walk into the store and say, ‘I like your boots,’ and she will say, ‘I’d like to find you a pair.’ She’ll sit [the patron] down and find out his or her size. I’ll try to help and she’ll tell me: ‘I’ve got it dad.’”

The store’s boots range from $65 for children to $450 for men. Women’s boots are the most popular, and range in the $190s, Culpepper said. Boot styles include fringe, sharkskin and jeweled patterns, he said.

“We take out the middleman,” Eva said of her company’s process. “We realized the [boot price] markups [in the business] and that people would get overpriced boots elsewhere.”