What's a boot jack? Funny you should ask (15 photos)

Most people in Sault Ste. Marie probably don’t know that behind the closed doors of a small unassuming old church on Albert St. is Canada’s largest manufacturer of a boot-removal tool called a “boot jack”.

“It’s a wood product manufactured for the western apparel market,” said Garry Helm, owner and operator of Creative Wood Products which produces between 15,000-20,000 units per year.

Helm imprints custom images or logos on the boot jacks as his product is primarily used as a marketing tool.

“There’s two types of customers I have…retail customers that have a western apparel shop (and) if someone buys two or three hundred dollars of product they’ll throw them a bootjack (as well as) manufactures (that) might throw in 50 or 100 boot jacks free with (a high quantity) order,” said Helm.

Helm said he manufactures for “the largest manufacturer of cowboy boots in Canada” Boulet Boots, Canada West Shoe out of Winnipeg, the Canadian arm of the Australian company Blundstone, amongst others.

Helm took his business to Sault Ste. Marie from Timmins three years ago when he realized he had completely “filled the Canadian market” of about 80 suitable retailers and wanted to expand into the United States, which he said has about 4000 shops and is “potentially a million dollar market”.

“In order to sell to U.S. market you have to be on the border because the margin is so low on this project that if I used a broker from Timmins to ship … it would eat up all the profit,” said Helm.

Helm answered an ad in the newspaper and moved into his current location in a small renovated Albert Street church that, according to records at the Engineering and Planning department of city hall, used to be the Finnish Pentecostal Betania.

Another quirky aspect of the current location is that much of the manufacturing is done in the same space as an antiques business.

The production process includes bringing in 1x6 pine planks through the front doors of the church, cutting and sanding the planks into the boot jack shape, and then printing, oiling, fastening the feet and adding leather to the handles.

Helm’s printing process utilizes a modified cast-iron Chandler and Price platen press from 1800s.

The machine’s original function was a foot powered letterpress for newspapers but Helm adjusted it to print up to two and a half inches in thickness and installed a variable speed motor.  

Since starting in 1983 Helm’s business has gone through many ups and downs.

“The average guy just doesn’t know what it takes to start and run a business. The road to entrepreneurial ship is littered with dead bodies,” said Helm.

Helm recalls a time his business actually closed in 2002 after he was in a serious car accident.

The healing process left the business temporarily bust and because Helm had always funded it out of pocket he had no established line of credit to get bank financing. 

Helm said he was forced to use multiple cheque payday loan type businesses to give him cash advances on his disability cheques for almost two years until his credit rating was high enough that he could get financing through a bank.

Helm wanted to especially highlight this since he was forced to pay an 450 annual percentage rate on the lent cash contrasted with an approximately 20 percent rate that a more normal money loan might run.

“That makes the mafia look like choir boys. The mafia lends at about 40 or 50 percent and they're illegal! These guys are sanctioned by the banks and its just a travesty,” said Helm.

“This is a little business that meets every requirement that the Canadian government desires for a manufacturer... Not only are we value added to a forestry product but we’re exporting without one dollar of the governments assistance. They have all these pages and pages of information on their website, ‘let us show you how to get into the foreign market, be an exporter, and blah blah blah and jump through all these hoops and we won’t help you but well certainly eat up your time.’ But I did it all myself on 450 per cent money,” said Helm with a proud laugh.

(PHOTO: Helm said that Creative Wood Products has been so successful because his competitor makes a much inferior product. Helm said that the image on his product (right) will last a decade while the image on his main competitor's, boot jack (left) will quickly fade. Photo by Jeff Klassen)