About Boot Butler

I’m fortunate to have grown up around Creative Closets®, a custom closet company founded by my mother (AKA The Closet Lady®).  Through her, I developed an appreciation for and understanding of effective and efficient organization.

When I graduated from college, I decided to join my mother’s company, making it a true family business.  I focused on consulting for clients and designing custom storage systems to accommodate their needs.

The most important thing I learned was the importance of listening closely to their problems.  I regularly met clients with boot collections ranging from 5 to 15 pairs. On occasion, some of them had as many as 150 pairs.

They would frequently ask me “What do you have for my boots!?”. As an expert in closet design, the fact that I couldn’t offer a satisfactory recommendation always embarrassed me.

Despite the fact that most of our clients were aware of existing boot storage products such as boot shapers, clip hangers, and upside down boot racks, almost no one was using them.

In most cases, I would find their boots in a pile on the floor or in their original retail boxes.  I began asking “Why aren’t you using these products?”, and found that the reasons were consistent:

(a) the boot storage solutions didn’t keep the boots organized,

(b) they took up too much space,

(c) they didn’t fit in the closet(s) with the rest of their wardrobe.

It became clear that there was a need for an efficient and useful boot storage product for boot owners everywhere. So, I got to work.

For several years, the answer eluded me, but then one evening, I stumbled upon an ad for a clip style boot hanger that got me thinking: hanging boots from a closet rod is both convenient and versatile.

But clip hangers can damage boots, some boots slip out of the clips, and worst of all they waste way too much space.  As a professional closet designer, you learn to think about space a bit differently.

It occurred to me that to efficiently hang boots from a closet rod, it would be preferable to use the depth of the closet to accommodate the longest dimension of the boots (the boot height).  It would also be important to use the vertical space that’s usually wasted below clip style hangers, since most closet rods are much higher than even the tallest boots.

I immediately got to work trying to implement these ideas.  Over the next two years, I became obsessed with developing the most efficient, user-friendly, and versatile boot organizer available.

To achieve this goal, I appropriated most of my wife’s boot collection, dedicated a room of our house to the development of prototypes, and committed every waking moment to developing Boot Butler.

Through endless testing and the feedback of friends, clients, colleagues, people in the closet storage industry, and anyone I ran into who happened to be wearing boots, I was able to refine my design into the product that you can buy today.

I hope that you find Boot Butler to be the boot organizer that you’ve been searching for.

Andy Elstein 
Owner/Inventor