cowboy-boots
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Paul Hedrick and the business at his feet
A pair of ostrich boots helped Paul Hedrick find his way back to Texas. Building Tecovas would mean learning when to trust his own eye - and when to hand someone else the reins.
Krista Dalton
Krista Dalton is Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Tecovas, the Austin-based western wear brand built on handmade cowboy boots that has grown into a lifestyle label with more than 50 US stores. She spent nine years at Target, where she moved from allocating plus-size and maternity apparel to becoming the first person the company shifted from stores to Target.com in 2013, then seven years at Overstock.com (now Beyond Inc), ending as Chief Customer and Merchandising Officer with a team of over 1,300 and an $800M-plus P&L. At Tecovas she has pushed the brand into work boots and women's workwear, run TV blackout tests to prove what awareness actually buys, sent her team into customers' closets, and built a custom AI agent to chew through the roughly 16 reports she used to read by hand. Footwear News named her to its Women Who Rock class of 2026, where she argued that authenticity is the new competitive advantage.