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Not every winner in the AI race makes chips. Some sell cowboy boots.<\/strong><\/p>\n Boot Barn a U.S. retailer best known for western \u200bwear, said on Tuesday that a growing share of its bulk workwear \u200corders were now tied to data-center construction.<\/p>\n The brand has long sold boots in bulk to oil and gas and construction firms looking to outfit their entire teams. Now, \u201cmore and more often, \u200bthose are data centers,\u201d CEO John Hazen said at the Goldman Sachs \u200bGlobal Consumer and Retail Conference in New York.<\/p>\n The company now finds \u2060itself tracking the progress of nearby data center projects to determine what kinds \u200bof boots to stock in local stores, underscoring how the AI spending surge is \u200brippling far beyond Silicon Valley and reshaping fortunes across the broader economy.<\/p>\n Boot Barn, which sells western-style and work boots across its nearly 600 stores, has seen comparable sales growth in its work boots \u200bbusiness for the past five consecutive quarters. The company did not immediately respond \u200bto a request for comment on revenue growth figures tied to data centers.<\/p>\n Employment in the U.S. \u200cconstruction \u2060sector has ticked up this year, driven by demand for labor to build data centers. Construction added 22,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department reported.<\/p>\n The growing appetite for workwear shows the sheer scale of the data-center buildout underway in the U.S., even \u200bas some AI executives \u200bhave recently urged \u2060caution about the pace of the technology\u2019s development and communities increasingly push back against the energy and water demands of \u200bnew facilities.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they\u2019re clearing dirt, we need regular work boots. \u200bWhen they\u2019re \u2060building the four walls, we are looking at steel-toe work boots,\u201d Hazen said.<\/p>\n Workwear maker Brunt Workwear is seeing a similar pattern. The company told Reuters that some of its \u2060strongest \u200bdemand is coming from California and Texas, two states \u200battracting some of the largest AI infrastructure investments.<\/p>\n Brunt Workwear is \u201cpushing hard\u201d to meet demand from data-center construction, \u200bCEO Eric Girouard said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n