Jimmy has a Steel Blue tattoo and a heart as big as Texas
- Michael “Jimmy” Prescott is Steel Blue’s territory manager for Texas and Louisiana in the USA
- He’s taken his love of Steel Blue boots to the next level, getting our logo tattooed on his shoulder!
- Jimmy might be as American as apple pie, but he’s an honorary Aussie—he even followed the AFL.
Deep in the heart of Texas lives a man with some surprisingly Australian tattoos, including one of the Steel Blue logo. That man is Michael “Jimmy” Prescott, and although he’s as American as apple pie, he’s also a bit of an Aussie legend. We’ll get to the tattoo in a minute. First, let’s meet Jimmy.
Meet Jimmy, Steel Blue’s territory manager for Texas and Louisiana
Jimmy is “our man in Texas”. He’s the guy who drives around the Lone Star state (and neighbouring Louisiana) talking to Steel Blue’s distributors and introducing local businesses to our boots.
“It’s my job to go out and literally create relationships with companies that want to sell Steel Blue boots and then manage those relationships and everything that that implies,” he said.
It’s a very sociable job, and it’s one that Jimmy was born to do.
“If there’s a chart of extroversion, I’m an outlier,” he said. “I’m outside of the scalable range of extrovert. I love talking. I’m at my best when I’m walking into a new business with a pair of boots and saying, ‘Hey, here I am. Who do I talk to about the boots?’
“If I can get a pair of boots on someone’s foot, they’re sold on them,” he said. “The reception (in the US) has been unbelievable.
“I’m 50. I’ve been working for easily 30 years. I’ve had grown men my age, even a little older, look me in the eye and say, ‘I’ve never had a more comfortable boot’.”
A man of passion
Jimmy, as you can tell, is passionate about his job and about our boots. He joined Steel Blue in 2017, having previously worked for a big American retailer that sold safety boots out of 18-wheeler trucks they called “shoemobiles”. Jimmy’s infectious personality meant he was exactly the kind of guy Steel Blue needed to help us in our mission of taking Australian safety boots to the people of the United States. What we didn’t know at the time was just how much Jimmy would take Steel Blue, and Australia, into his heart.
“I really, really believe in our product,” he said. “I left a good position with my previous employer, that was very secure, because I put the boots on my feet and I believed in it. I bought into it. In the U.S., we call it drinking the Kool-Aid. I drank the Kool-Aid. I really love what I do, and I really want to make this company grow.”
At this juncture we should point out that we don’t ask even our most loyal team members to get our company logo tattooed on their body. Jimmy did that all by himself.
“I told my boss if we hit a certain sales target, I’d get a Steel Blue tattoo,” Jimmy said. “It became a thing and I couldn’t go back on it. The tattoo has been a big hit. People say things to me like, ‘what happens if you don’t work there anymore?’
“Firstly, have you ever seen the episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza quits and then shows back up Monday morning, trying to act like nothing ever happened? That’s Plan A.
“Plan B is they will have to actually get a restraining order to stop me selling Steel Blue boots.”
“I’ve built an office in my backyard and painted it the corporate colors and named it New Perth.”
An All-American Aussie larrikin
Like we said, Jimmy is quite the character. Not only has he taken Steel Blue into his big ol’ Texan heart but, while on trips to the head office in Australia, he has also become a massive AFL fan, adopting the Fremantle Dockers as his team.
“I’ve completely switched over from NFL,” he said.
And yes, Jimmy’s love of Freo is so strong, he’s got a Dockers tattoo, too.
But why, you may ask, do we call him Jimmy when his name is Michael. Well, that’s a nod to Texas pioneer and revolutionary Jim Bowie, the man for whom the Bowie knife is named (the “that’s not a knife; this is a knife” kind of knife Crocodile Dundee carried around New York).
“I carry around three pocketknives,” Jimmy explained, proving that while he might be an Australian legend, he’s still very much a Texan at heart.
