From Soviet Ukraine to Spokane: The Roots Behind JK Boots

Most boot companies have a founding story, and you can't truly understand JK Boots without understanding where the Khadzi family came from and how they started. This is the beginning of the story of how John Khadzi and his two sons Will and Tim Khadzi started one of the fastest growing boot brands. 

A Cobbler in Moldova

John Khadzi was born in 1967 in southeastern Ukraine, in a region called Bessarabia. It's historically a Bulgarian area that was settled centuries earlier when they were fleeing Ottoman occupation. So growing up, he spoke Bulgarian at home and learned Russian at school.

After completing his military service, John got married in 1989 to Natalie Khadzi after which they relocated to Bender, a city in Moldova. It was there that he got a job as a cobbler in a factory and learning to make all kinds of shoes, working with leather and learning the bootmaking craft from the ground up. He became really skilled at it which would be important later.

How War Changed Everything

In 1992, a civil war started in Moldova. For John and his family which now included two young children, it went from political instability to terrifyingly close to home almost overnight. 

There is one story in particular told by John where they were out in the yard picking cherries with Will who was only a year old. Out of nowhere someone just starts shooting at them and bullets start just whizzing past them. John had to jump down and grab Will and crawl back to their house while the shooting just continued. 

Things only escalated from there with the situation just being really chaotic and confusing and even getting to the point where they had tanks just rolling down the main road. At some point they understood that staying there wasn't really an option.

Miracle at the Blockade

John had always been drawn to America. He had a belief in the American dream, despite all the propaganda and uncertainty, he knew there was opportunity there that wasn't anywhere else. 

He had a brother already living in the United States in Spokane, Washington and that connection opened up a possible path for immigration. They had a meeting in Moscow they had to be at to be able to emigrate so they had to cross over the border past a blockade into Russia. So they got into a car and just drove right through the blockade. All of the other vehicles before and after them were being stopped but they got through without being stopped or being flagged down. It was almost as if the car wasn't even seen. 

They made it to Moscow and had the meeting and were granted refugee status. So on March 1994, John boarded a plane to Spokane with his family, their suitcases and $800. There is a photo of them at the gate when they landed at the Spokane airport and every time Tim passes through there it serves as a reminder of where they came from.

Starting From Nothing

What followed after they arrived was the grinding, unglamorous work of starting over in a country where they didn't speak the language and almost didn't know anyone. But John didn't waste any time. Even on the plane there he learned to count to ten in english.

As they settled in Spokane, there were government programs available to them like food stamps, but within a week John rejected them because it didn't feel right to him. He had that mentality that value had to be created and you couldn't just receive without contributing. Tim describes his John as a pioneer, someone who moves towards risk rather than away from it, and someone that believes faithfully that moving forward is the only real option.

Portland Dream, Foreclosure, and the Slow Rebuild

After arriving in Spokane, John worked and saved and by 2006 he had enough to buy a repair shop in Hillsboro, Oregon. So he moved and even purchased a home to try to build something from scratch in a new city. Unfortunately, the timing was brutal. The financial crisis hit, business dried up, the house went into foreclosure and the shop had to close. John packed his equipment and whatever he could carry and came back to Spokane with less than he started and a new pile of debt. This kind of failure has the potential to end a lot of stories, but for John this was just another chapter. 

Back in Spokane, John and Natalie leased a small space. This would be the start of what the company is now. Natalie was a seamstress so she started taking in tailoring work and John went back to a job he knew to get out from under the debt. Little by little, it worked and the debt slowly cleared. As their business stabilized, somewhere in the back of John's mind, he had a vision that he never let go of. He wanted to make boots and start a boot company with his sons. 

John talked about his vision with both of his sons raising them to be future co-owners. JK Boots exists because of this dream and this start is the basis for what the company is now. 

*This is the first part of the story of JK Boots. Next: how a chance encounter helped John Khadzi turn a shoe repair shop into the foundation of JK Boots.