Good as new - or better

WALDOBORO, Maine — The neighborhood shoe repair shop might seem like a relic from the past and a candidate for extinction, with more Americans planting their feet in throwaway shoes and athletic footwear.

But don’t tell that to Bill Wheeler. He entered the business four months ago at age 56, pumping new life into a collection of machines and hand tools that he purchased through EBay from a defunct repair shop.

The opening of Coastal Cobbler, sandwiched between an appliance business and a cell-phone office, means Waldoboro’s 5,000 residents no longer have to travel 35 miles to Brunswick or 50 miles to Lewiston for shoe repairs.

It also bucks a decades-long decline in the number of repair shops. While cities still support multiple repair shops, many towns have none.

The number of cobblers has dropped from roughly 100,000 during the Great Depression to about 7,000 today, according to the Shoe Service Institute of America.

And the trend continues.

For every repair shop that opens, two or three are closing their doors, but the rate of attrition appears to be slowing, said Jim McFarland, who serves on the board of SSIA, an industry trade group staffed by volunteers.

“By 2020, unless we see a radical change, there will be around 5,000 or 6,000 shops,” said Mr. McFarland, who operates a shop in Lakeland, Fla.

The cause of the decline is plain to see.

Last year’s average retail price of a dress shoe — men’s, women’s and children’s — was $32.59, according to the NPD Group Inc., a market research company in Port Washington, N.Y. Dress casual shoes were even cheaper, averaging $30.46 a pair.

That’s considerably less than the $40 to $45 that most shops charge to put on a set of half soles and heels.

Also, dressier shoes make up a dwindling percentage of footwear sales. Last year, dress and dress casual shoe sales were $10.7 billion, roughly half of what Americans paid for sneakers and other athletic footwear.

Many of today’s consumers have no familiarity with repair shops and some are unaware that old shoes can be made as good as new, Mr. McFarland said. He cited estimates that only 10 percent of Americans have their shoes repaired.

Despite those worrisome figures, Mr. Wheeler decided to take the plunge. Skilled in the use of tools and machinery, the former shoe factory worker liked the idea of a trade that enables him to extend the life of a product that would otherwise be discarded.

“In a throwaway society, this is a really valuable thing,” he said. “It does something for the environment, maybe make a bit of an impact.”

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