 This one costs $800. This one is US$380. Those are the prices, but this price match quality. Let's dive in. G'day, how you going? Welcome to Brutalosophy, and my name is Tech. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands I'm recording on, the Wajik people of Nungabuja. Today, I'm taking a look at how Weiberg compares to Grant Stone. I will put links to both of their websites in the description box below this video. One is US$800, and the other is US$380, so some people might say you get what you pay for, so Weiberg must be at least twice as good. There are some complicating factors though, such as fashion, such as a long established name with the value of financial goodwill behind them, and such as where they are made and how geography, while not necessarily dictating quality, can dictate lower costs of production. The question is, how far does pricing match the quality of goods produced? First of all, let's take a look at the Weiberg stitch down service boot. Weiberg is a Canadian company that's been established since 1931, and is still owned and operated by the same Weiberg family. Originally making farming and logging work boots in the 2000s, Brett Weiberg, the third generation Weiberg, regenerated the service boot from an old Canadian military boot, and made it what Ben from Stitch Down calls a cultural phenomenon. This one is in classic brown chrome excel, but watch this review up here of the Brogue Capto service boot in Oil Colata, which gives you the full Weiberg history. This is the service boot that in 2008 kicked off the revived service boot trend, and riding on the Americana heritage wave from Red Wing Iron Rangers in Japan, can be said to have influenced brands like Thursday, Grant Stone, Parkhurst in the 2010s, and now others since then. While you can get it in a variety of lasts and uppers, captoe or plaintoe, and variations in hardware and outsole, the basic design is the same as this one. It's called a six inch boot, but in reality, like most six inch boots, measures a little less from the top of the heel to the shaft. It has a low block heel for stability, and an open derby lacing system for ease of putting on and taking off, and quick to lace up. The pattern is simple, with a minimal number of panels. The Weiberg construction is Stitch Down, where the uppers are lasted and then flared out, and stitched directly onto the midsole and the outsole. This one, in arguably the sleekest last, is made on the 2030 last, and has a sleek almond shaped toe. It comes in sizes from UK 6 to UK 13, with some half sizes, but only in an E width. Other lasts do come in D and double E widths. Before we move on, these sell for 800 US dollars. The comparison is the cheaper, 380 US dollar diesel boot from Grant Stone. You can take a look at my review of this particular boot up here. Again, while the diesel boot is available in a wide array of uppers, variations of outsole from studs to leather to lugs, in different hardware configurations, different welts even, welts finishes, the basic design revolves around a plain toe service or ankle boot. Like the Weiberg service boot, there is a low block heel, sleek profile, minimal pieces making up the design, a slightly more rounded but nevertheless almond shaped toe, and the same near enough six inch height. Unlike the Weiberg, this one is good year welted. The uppers are lasted and then turned inwards, and then stitched on the inside to a strip of leather called the welt that goes all the way around the edge, and at the same time then stitched to the insole inside. Then the sole construction of the mid and outsole are glued on, and then stitched on through the outside edge of the welt. Both good year welting and stitched down are long lasting water resistant and recraftable. How much so of each of those characteristics is open to debate amongst aficionado fans of each particular type of construction. To get a bit more detail on the different types of construction, take a look at this video up here. Grandstone is an American company, started in 2016 based in Michigan, and uses a lot of solid leathers from famous tanneries like Horween from Chicago, Badalassi Carlo from Italy, and Charles Sevastegrom from the UK, as well as US Veg Ten leather for welts, midsole and insole and heel counters. Their factory is in the resort city of Xiamen in China, which produces excellent quality work making Grandstone boots second to none in quality control. As a management consultant, I always maintain that geography does not dictate quality, systems and procedures do. When I was starting my career, China and Korea were starting their manufacturing industries and they were producing some pretty bad products. In the last 40 years as their workers gained experience, their management gained knowledge in how to implement documented systems and procedures like a checklisted step-by-step QC process. Give me a good production manual and I can help your business make quality goods anywhere you like. So to start our comparison proper, let's take a look at the materials, execution of construction, finishing, and then the eventual comfort. First materials, both Weiberg and Grandstone use top quality uppers from famous tanneries that have been around for generations from around the world. I chose both these boots because they use chrome excel from Halloween tannery, the Weiberg in brown and the Grandstone in black. Chrome excel is said to be potentially prevalent to loose grain where the grain layer of the leather, presumably from the oil and hot wax stuffing, can flex and separate from the middle layers. This shows as a wrinkly patch, I'm not sure you can see that, which is totally unlike a normal crease from bending the leather at your flex points. To others this prevalence is something that can show in other tans as well, especially if you look at softer parts of the hide like the belly where the animal had more fat, less muscle and the skin was looser in life. To get around it, the maker must choose the parts of the hide they cut or click wisely. In both these examples, the clicking is pretty good, although I must say the creasing of the uppers and maybe some loose grain is appearing more on the diesel boot than on the Weiberg. This could be one reason for a very impressed. If you are totally selective about your clicking, that means that potentially you throw away more of a hide, hence the pieces that you use will be piece by piece more expensive. As for other materials both brands seem to use, again top natural materials in the leather insoles and midsole and heel counters and so on. Both use steel shanks, yes Weiberg had leather and wood and I think fiberglass at times, but I understand now that they use steel. Weiberg does use a foam filler instead of the natural cork used by Grant Stone, but I think they also now use cork. One difference, Weiberg will use outsoles by older generational brands like Day Night in this, Ridgeway as well as Vibram. Grant Stone used their own proprietary outsoles. In this diesel model it's on a leather sole and I do find that this leather sole that Grant Stone uses for their outsoles is not as firm and durable as some other leather outsoles that I have had on my other brands. In the first few weeks, I was concerned about how the tip of the boot was wearing fast. Construction wise, the Grant Stone welting is secure and durable, the stitching on the welt and on the uppers is always clean and precise and very uniform. The care in making sure that the ends of the welt meet is incredible. How they match is always amazing to me to the extent that you often can't see where they meet. On the Weiberg, the stitch down construction is more time consuming, even though this is not hand stitched. Also in this case it's a double stitch, one through the uppers and then the midsole and then the outsoles glued and nailed on and a second stitch goes through everything. The stitching of the double row is very precise and very neat and very clean. The time taken is another potential addition to this cost. As they say, time is money. The Weiberg service boot is a 270 degree stitch down and so the rear end is glued and nailed and it is nailed. If you look at cobbler videos or factory videos of Weiberg, you'll see that an inordinate number of nails are used banging the sole and harking back to their work boot history. So this thing ain't coming apart. Another tick to the price. Both brands execute their construction well and weed out bad mistakes through a rigorous QC inspection process. You rarely see, even on grumpy social media, any complaints about receiving something with loose stitches or missed punch holes or badly fitted hardware. As for finishing, both finish their products well. Finally, the stitching on the stitch down in the Weisberg is very precise and the stitch density is high. The same on the Grant Stone. For a work boot brand, their stitch to fine finishing has been successful I think. For a new brand that started acknowledging that they wanted to make boots as dressy as olden, Grant Stone can take that achievement off their list. Finally, looking at overall quality, you obviously need to see that they fit you comfortably because the best made boot that squeezes your toes black and blue ain't quality in my book because it's not the whole package. To me, and I stress that, to me, the Weiberg 2030 Last is a great fit. The design of the last wraps the uppers around my feet well and there is no heel slip. The width at the ball of the foot flexes at just the right point. Underfoot, I find there's just enough shock absorption and the rolling of the design is ideal for my walking gait. To the Grant Stone. The Elio Last was designed for fit and comfort first in mine. So in terms of how the uppers fit, I prefer this last for comfort. Even though I prefer the sleeker Weiberg toe box for the looks. The Leo Last is a combination last where the heels are narrow in width, narrow than the standard D, so that it is snug in the heel and waist and comfortable at the ball of the foot. Underneath, the shock absorption is good and over time I do feel the leather in its shaping to my feet as I wear them more and more. So to value, or more accurately, the price to value ratio. Weiberg at $800 versus Grant Stone at $380. I've gone through the materials and construction that could have a bearing on price. I've talked about geography and how that could have a bearing on costs. What I haven't talked about is financial goodwill, meaning the intangible extra you pay for a product because of a name or reputation. If I can demonstrably show you a glass of champagne made from the same grape by winemakers of equal experience, but one was labeled Tech's Backyard Vat and the other was Mois Chandon Vintage, I'll bet you pay more for the Mois. That's the name and expected expertise that you just know will produce a better wine. So Weiberg, so Alden, so once upon a time Floor Shine. The question is how much extra would you pay? You might pay $20 for my champagne and $100 for the Mois, but would you pay $500 for the Mois? There is a breakeven line. This next is my opinion. Grant Stone makes a great boot. They use arguably slightly lesser materials inside, but then Weiberg have their foam. Grant Stone has the advantage of lower production costs. Weiberg do not and in fact, probably increased their production costs with better clicking and the stitch down construction. But the double price does not match a doubling of quality. So taking everything in, including the not small advantage of lower production costs, is the goodwill element too much. Not in my opinion. Surveys from the last five years have found that while the gap is closing, there is still something like a 17 to 20% gap between industrial manufacturing costs in China versus the USA. Canada wasn't easy to find so I took the USA stats. So Grant Stone potentially has an immediate 20% advantage, meaning the $380 diesel could rise to the high 400s. That lesser difference could explain the extra cost of stitch down and better clicking by Weiberg plus the financial goodwill premium. So does price match quality? Not at the prices as they are. Certainly the Weiberg is a great boot. But not at twice the price of the diesel, or to put it another way, the diesel is not half the quality of the Weiberg. What this boils down to is the cost differential. Would you pay $800 for a Made in Canada boot made by a famous three-generational company history in making tough work and logging boots clearly durable, bringing that experience into dress boots because it's been around long enough to prove that people keep repairing decades old boots. To me I say yes. Would you buy a Made in China boot for $380 made by a new company with unproven decades of longevity of product? Again I'd say yes, because these are good boots and worth at least $100 more. So price does not match quality, but value in both is in my opinion just about right. Well there we are then. If you can afford one, go buy a Weiberg stitch down service boot. It is worth a value of $800, and it will be your comfortable boot for almost ever. I personally don't think you'll regret it, but if you can't afford an $800 boot right now, buy a Grant Stone diesel boot at $380, its value is not half of a Weiberg, but possibly $100 more than it sells for if you see what else it competes against. It will be comfy and you will enjoy them. With both these brands you can't go wrong, and if you like them, click the like button below. If you like Weiberg and Grant Stone, click on the subscribe button because I'll bring you more about these two brands and more about all kinds of boots. Was that a good segue or not? Don't miss them. Until then, take care of yourselves, and see you soon.