Bearded and bespectacled, Limmer looks the part of an old world craftsman. He explains that his custom boots are fitted to within two millimeters of a customer's original measurements and that each is fashioned from a single piece of leather, a classic boot making technique that's gone the way of cheap gas.
This kind of attention to detail is what has helped the company earn the fierce loyalty of its customers. In the shop, they tell stories about a schoolteacher who flew 60 hours round-trip from Tasmania, Australia, last year solely for a custom fitting.
Tennessee, who's already purchased five pairs, is only too happy to wax poetic about the boot's design elements. The seams are placed on the inside of the foot, he tells me, instead of at the back, so the boots better conform to one's heel and provide a smoother ride.
And their durability is nearly the stuff of legend. Limmer says it's not uncommon for them to recondition boots that are 30 years old.
The barn, which had a previous life as a dance hall in the 1930s and '40s, is part workshop, part museum. The quaint fitting area holds generations of memories. Old-fashioned wooden shoe forms stand rack upon rack and a 1902 Singer sewing machine that should have been retired during the Coolidge administration still hums with activity.
On one wall is prominently hung Herr Peter Limmer's certificate from the German shoemaking guild circa 1921, along with the first US patent, in 1939, for a ski boot. That grew out of a relationship Limmer had with Harvard Outing Club members, who, according to Limmer's grandson, frequented the boot maker when it was located in Jamaica Plain. Herr Limmer moved the shop to New Hampshire in 1951 after his sons returned from a skiing trip with tales of how the Granite State had reminded them of their father's native Bavaria.
