The next generation of cobblers are focused on sneakers | Hacker News Reader

The next generation of cobblers are focused on sneakers

gearpatrol.com

62 pointsrmason56 comments

The title for this confused me. I read half the article expecting it to be about why advances in boots made it so the next generation of cobblers wouldn't repair them. A better title/summary, IMO is "The next generation of shoe cobblers are focused on sneakers".

i.e. "Cobblers repair shoes of all kinds", which sounds an awful lot like a tautology.

But it's actually a good point. As a practical minded consumer of clothes (read: unfashionable), this article did make me wonder why I've gotten so used to buying new shoes when my old ones wear out, instead of taking them to a cobbler.

I suspect the answer is that I can probably order a new pair for less cost than I could repair an old one, but I actually haven't checked the truth of this hypothesis in over a decade.

I am under the assumption only dress shoes or similar can be repaired. I cannot imagine it is possible to repair a pair of running shoes or sneakers.

As a side note, I would change careers if I had to wear dress shoes so much that they got to the state of needing to be repaired.

Nice dress cowboy boots make better and more comfortable dress shoes than dress shoes.

You might not like the stylistic statement, but they're actually shoes you can spend 18 hours on your feet.

You can find something comfortable in nearly any boot style, since they're almost all based on designs that were actually intended to be used for long stretches of physical activity. Work-boot styles (obviously), equestrian styles (western, Chelsea, jodhpur), military (chukkas, "jump boots"), and hunting (which even includes most "dress" styles, which are typically based on rural British hunting/stalking boots) all have practical-wear lineage, and usually are little removed from the originals, if at all.

Yep. "Roper" boots are especially good if you want something a bit less 'cowboy'. For instance: https://www.tecovas.com/products/the-earl?variant=3168641063... (I can't speak to that brand, I don't own any Tecovas).

For day to day, I got myself some of these, because they can be resoled and repaired and are tough: https://www.redwingshoes.com/work/mens/soft-toe/SuperSole-01... - they are not very stylish, but then again neither am I so we're even.

I have a bunch of pairs of Tony Llama, Justin and Nacona boots, realistically, Tecovas offers you more options if you dont want square toe boots - the industry seems to have decided everyone wants square toe boots.

I'm lucky and I'm in Fort Worth, there is a Justin Boot Outlet, which has factory seconds for.. well cheap, and I've bought far too many boots there. But I find them more comfortable than tennis shoes, other than perhaps I look a bit silly wearing them with shorts.

For someone choosing any fine leather shoe or boot, some pro tips:

* Chose Calf Leather - its easier to maintain, and care for and has a longer life than virtually any other material.

* If you dont need fancy, oil skin boots are a good option, all you need to do is clean them with a finger brush and saddle soap, then re-oil them periodically. You can oil them with either Mink Oil or Hubbards Shoe Grease.

* Learn how to polish shoes - use a color matching cream polish, then let that dry, then use a paste (like Kiwi) polish on top, buff that to a gloss. There are good youtube videos that can show you how to do this too. For that shaft of these boot, just use a leather moisturizing cream.

These are good options for the boot newbie.

https://www.tonylama.com/en-US/Product/Details?stylenumber=T...

https://www.tonylama.com/en-US/Product/Details?stylenumber=7...

I'm on the same page.

When my fancy dress shoes need repair or replacing, even I can tell what work it needs, though I can't perform that work myself. It needs a new sole, or new stitching, or wtv.

With sneakers, I'm utterly trained to think "well now it's trash" rather than "could this be repaired". And, thanks to this article, I'm gonna try to have the "how do I repair it" thought first, instead of the "how do I replace it" thought.

Which is weird, because this is absolutely already how I think about laptops and cellphones.

So actually I had a pair of "unrepairable" sneakers repaired, a £150 pair of Ecco shoes where the sole completely wore out, I kept asking around if they could be possibly repaired and found a cobbler in Edinburgh that replaced the sole for £50 - it was perfect fit, they somehow gave them a brand new lease of life.

But of course the main problem here is that you could easily buy a new pair of shoes for £50.....

£50 for a new sole seems expensive. unless you were looking for some special material or like sneakers they were difficult to fix.

either way, if £50 doubles the live of a £150 pair of shoes, i think it is still worth it. you need to consider the new pair you could get for £50 may not be what you want to wear, because otherwise why did you spend £150 to begin with?

The pictures in the story look more like fashion-oriented mods to shoes, than straight repairs or a traditional re-soling. AFAIK you'd pretty much have to rip off the whole bottom half of a typical glue-construction tennis shoe to replace the sole, so you're practically rebuilding the thing, at that point. Look at the wide sewn-on strips around the bottom of the example shoes, just above the welt—ten-to-one that's covering up (or repairing) where the damage was done, removing the original sole.

Resoling running shoes has been around since I started paying attention to such things in the early 80s. (I'm more of a Shoo Goo guy myself.) One example:

https://nushoe.com/running-shoes-repair.html

I don't buy expensive shoes, so it seems obvious to me that it's cheaper to replace than repair, so I do that.

But I do have one expensive ($150 on sale, $300 retail) pair of winter bike boots, and the soles gradually detached from the uppers, letting water seep in. I took them to my local shoe repair place and they made them good as new for $25. Total bargain.

So, it's worth a shot.

Ok, we'll use your title above. Thanks!

I also took the 'shoe' out of 'shoe cobblers' - isn't that like saying 'clothes tailor'?

Maybe put it back? As a non-nativer speaker when I read cobblers the first thing I think of cobbled roads and the people who make/maintain them.

With the Shoe Cobblers it makes it clear it's talking about shoe manufacturers.

I have enormous respect for the non-native English speakers on HN and their/your incredible mastery of the English language - it's truly astonishing how good nearly everyone is. But in this case my inner grad student needs to insist on the English meaning of the word. The etymologies do trace "cobblestone" and "cobbler" to a common root (though not definitively), but there doesn't seem to be any meaning of "cobbler" that refers to cobblestone makers. I don't know what the latter would be called - maybe cobblestone masons?

and now you've learned something new about the language

The word "shoe" does help to distinguish it from the cobblers which are eaten for dessert. ;-)

Also, cobblers can repair modern hiking boots with cemented (not welted) construction. https://www.davepagecobbler.com/ resoled my wife's Asolo boots, replacing an EVA midsole that had crumbled, for well under the cost of a new pair.

I got a pair of Asolos with cemented EVA midsoles repaired in Bariloche too, at the place where I bought them. The trick is finding an adhesive that won't react with the plastics/leather and that's strong enough. The shop told me that the cobbler they used got in contact with Asolo before doing his own tests and they helped him find the best adhesive he could source locally.

They broke after something like 1600kms. They went for over 1000kms more after that and I just stopped using them because I didn't pack them when I moved.

The repairability of shoes where aestetics don't matter as much is overstated. For a nice pair of dress shoes with a leather upper the stitch down construction lets you keep the creases and everything at the same place when you repair. On a hiking boot that doesn't matter as much.

My LLBean Cresta hiking boots will probably last me another decade before I swap em out for free for a new pair. Can't think of many reasons I'd ever need a cobbler for my hiking boots.

Seriously? You’re going to use them for a decade plus then abuse the return policy for a new pair? Not cool.

It's hardly abuse - their return policy was a "lifetime warranty", if they weren't willing to honour it after 10 years then they shouldn't have advertised it as such.

Looks like GP might be outta luck though - LL Bean scrapped their lifetime warranty back in 2018 [1]. Not sure how retroactive limitations on warranty works in the US.

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/09/584493046...

It is abuse. The warranty wasn’t “free shoes for life.” If a pair of hiking boots lasts more than a decade (his comment seems to imply they’ve already lasted a decade) that’s a normal lifespan, not a problem.

Of course, one could always they weren’t satisfied and return it. But clearly they were satisfied enough to use them for 10+ years. I think it’s justifiable to call that abuse. And clearly people like that are the reason LL Bean (and REI) had to change their policy.

> If a pair of hiking boots lasts more than a decade (his comment seems to imply they’ve already lasted a decade) that’s a normal lifespan, not a problem.

If that's the expected lifespan of the shoes, then the warranty should reflect that.

> But clearly they were satisfied enough to use them for 10+ years.

Satisfaction is based on expectations, and when a product has a lifetime warranty it doesn't cap the expectation at any time period. GP might have expected them to last 15 years instead, and it would be hard to argue that 66% of the expected lifetime is 'satisfaction'.

Do you not understand how shoes work?

You're wrong. Please see my other comment upthread

Except when it's not. If the warranty "lifetime" and reads like "free replacement if they ever break, crack, or fail", then expecting to be able to use that warranty is fine.

Really, I'd expect the warranty to be more like "free replacement due to defects in material, assembly, or craftsmanship; excludes natural wear, abuse, natural disaster, fire, …".

The department store, Nordstrom, has a reputation for "no questions asked; no management approval needed" policy. They're reputed to pay for professional cleaning if someone spills something on you in their café (in addition to the usual apologies and maybe free meal/dessert some eateries might do), and allow free replacement of things bought any amount of time ago (even if obviously something they never sold). They seem to account for it all in higher prices. Yes, I would regard "exchanging" an old coat from another store there as abusive, but by all accounts given to me, they see as a cost of being so accommodating that people become diehard fans.

Au contraire; no hint of "abuse" here. When I bought my first pair of LLBean boots in the mid 1990's, they were sold with an amazing, explicit (verbal and written) benefit: "never buy another pair of boots". It was a lifetime guarantee. A few years later after wearing them all over New England and much of Europe the interior GoreTex lining had started to wear thin in one heel, so I brought em back to the store. An LLBean sales associate helped me pick a slightly differently-sized new pair for a free exchange. He told me, with a smile, "bring em back for another replacement if you ever wear em out."

I'm surprised to hear how bad a decline in shoe repair shops there's been. Shoes are one of the last consumer goods you can actually get repaired.

There's shoes, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, watches/clocks, firearms (if you consider them a consumer good) and ... what else?

Phone screens and batteries, I guess, if you don't just upgrade early instead of repairing it.

White goods, in theory, but the last 7 years I've had two landlords each replace a washer, dryer, and dishwasher that were beyond economical repair. I actually replaced the drum rollers and axles on the second dryer, but it was part of a stacked set, and when the washer died, the only option was to replace both.

Garments occasionally go to the tailor, but how many people truly get anything repaired vs altered to fit?

Am I missing anything here? I'm not including cars, as I don't know that I can call them a consumer good.

I suppose living in a city warps your perspective on the availability of shoe repair. I had work done at two separate shops in the Boston area and could probably find three or four more without much looking. That seems pretty prevalent to me, but I guess it probably isn't relative to the days before business casual was invented.

> I'm surprised to hear how bad a decline in shoe repair shops there's been. Shoes are one of the last consumer goods you can actually get repaired.

I'm legitimately worried that by the time any of my leather shoes & boots need re-soling (another couple years, probably) cobblers will be too rare and expensive to justify re-soling for anything but really high-end shoes (say, $500+, which are out of my league; I don't like wearing things that'd make me very sad if they got damaged).

Around here, there seems to be at least one small business in every city that maintains and repairs super automatic espresso machines.

It's definetly possible to get white goods repaired, and as with many things it's probably surprisingly economical to do it -- how else would the repair shops survive -- but you'd have to look at statistics. Now I feel a little bad scrapping our broken washing machine.

Computers still get repaired, though with laptops it's less easy I guess. Printers, too. If you count software-only repairs (and why not), those are pretty frequent.

Furniture and upholstery gets restored, though from what I know this is expensive enough that you'd only do it to very high quality stuff, not an Ikea cupboard that didn't survive moving. Or maybe you would? Ikea stuff is cheap but it ain't free.

Still not a long list, but it does get longer the more time you think about it.

There are some great YouTube channels that I love watching around repairing boots and shoes. If anyone cares:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVYlC0HmT9eZI3ZrFy_xthQ

https://www.youtube.com/c/BedosLeatherworksLLC

My prediction for all the inner-city commercial property that's becoming vacant due to a post-pandemic shift to WFH, is that it will be reclaimed by resurgent cottage industry

I doubt it. Where I live there are swaths of commercial real estate left vacant before the pandemic. Apparently the same few property brokers are buying up all property, raising commercial rents a ton, and just sitting on it. They don't even care if they have tenets because speculation is raising the values so much they still come out ahead.

If underlying demand doesn't recover (seems unlikely it will reach pre-Covid levels again for many years), won't this still lead to a collapse eventually?

Unclear IMO.

Vacant storefronts in big cities don't represent that much of the economy and without getting too into the weeds, the way they are financed often incentivizes owners to keep them vacant for potentially >10years racking up debt rather than rent below a certain price point which would trigger legal mechanisms that force them to put up a lot more cash immediately.

Absent vacancy taxes or some new regulations on commercial real estate the problem might persist indefinitely.

I think this is an important point. Even if debt can be used to avoid tax, you only want to put that debt towards something that builds equity. The commercial real estate market can only be in denial for so long before the fire sales begin and rents collapse. The fundamentals for inner city office space have gone out the window.. and the situation will only get worse.

That would be sustainable in a gentrifying or high income area, as bespoke products are massively expensive. I've been purchasing custom made shoes for many years now, and it's not unusual to spend $500-1500 even for medium level quality (not peak quality, like Berlutti shoes[1]).

The stubborn fact is that economies of scale are a real thing, and so there is a limited market for paying bespoke prices for every day objects like shoes.

[1] https://www.berluti.com/en-us/shoes/?viewtype=grid-view-edit...

The problem is see with repairing sneakers is that the quality of the sneakers vs long lasting shoes is very different. When it comes to sneakers I extend their life a bit with shoe goo when a certain part of the sole (outer heel for me) wears out too fast but the rest of the shoe is still in good condition. My horrible pattern of walking wears out sneakers's heels in about 2-3 months and shoe goo extends their life a bit more beyond that, but after less than a year most sneakers turn mushy, stinky, and generally unpleasant so I wouldn't want to fix them beyond that point.

When it comes to classic shoes, I'm wearing a pair of shoes that I've had for 6 years. They are still in great shape though I still have to take them to a cobbler once a year for a heel replacement. They still have plenty of life in them so a 10-15 yearly update is well worth it.

Do really, really nice sneakers last a lot longer than the $40-60 pairs I'd wear, back when I wore sneakers a lot? Even with fairly careful wear, mine would look so shitty I wouldn't want to re-sole them, by at most a year, and often by the 6 month mark they'd be looking iffy. I can't imagine a pair surviving with the body of the shoe still in good-enough shape that they'd be worth re-soling by the time the sole was worn enough to warrant that (some shoe goo to extend lifetime of a well-worn pair, on the other hand, makes sense).

Are people doing this with Danners or something? Rancourt & Company court shoes? Or do $xxx+ Nikes really hold up that well?

I have no idea but to me a pair of Converse should last more than 3 months and that's why I shoe goo mine to last 6 months. But I know people whose shoes age much better than mine, it's probably got to do with our walking pattern.

3-6 months seems incredibly short. My shoes typically last at least a year, and I don’t buy special fancy ones.

It may depend on the material. My recollection is that, when my usual shoe was a canvas low-top, I'd get maybe six months out of them before I probably shouldn't have still been wearing them in public (but then I'd stretch another 3-6 months out of them, sometimes with full-on holes, separating soles, or torn seams by the end—and I am not especially hard on my shoes, but then again I only ever bought cheap sneakers)

I am seemingly hard on my shoes, as most cheap pairs I've bought last 3-6 months before the soles start to separate or fall apart. But my Converses have generally lasted around a year looking nice enough that I'd still wear them for more dressed up non-formal occasions, and another year as a slighty scuffy looking walking around shoe.

I think all the actually-Converse shoes I've owned were the Target version (One Star? Something like that) that were "Converse" but were mostly likely much worse than the standard kind. A case of you-get-what-you-pay-for, most likely.

It depends on the shoe. Nike shoes have surprisingly low quality materials and their higher end shoes will not last as long as high quality shoe makers like New Balance or Adidas.

The high end fashion shoes will last a lot longer. I used to own a few pairs of Y-3 sneakers and they were extremely high quality.

It also depends on the materials. A knit running shoe like an Adidas Ultra Boost is $180, but those are going to last a few months to a year with daily use. A $60 pair of Saucony Jazz Originals will last longer (based on my own experience) than the Ultra Boost because the rubber outsole is thicker, and there's a nice taper to prevent heel drag. Saucony Jazz's also have a thicker upper material. The upper is maybe not as soft/comfortable as Ultra Boosts, but thicker nonetheless.

The only shoes I have ever owned that could be repaired and be cost effective to do so have been climbing shoes. I have had one pair resoled three times. I wish it were worth while to repair other shoes but alas, that's the world we live in.

Another thing that I wish were more commonly repaired are the palms on my hockey gloves. I tend to wear through the left palm before the right. I have a collection of nice right hands and junk left hands. I have been keeping them in hopes of learning to do it my self.

I just wear my hockey gloves until the palms are completely gone. More money to spend on unnecessary sticks :|

If you were intrigued by this article there's some YouTube channels dedicated to the restoration of old sneakers which are fascinating and strangely soothing to watch.

Sneakers are designed to be disposable. Repairing them seems like a fool’s errand, at best you’d end up with a Ship of Theseus.

Shoe of Theseus would be an awesome brand name for highly reparable shoes.

> at best you’d end up with a Ship of Theseus

As long as it doesn't cause an existential crisis for the shoe, that doesn't sound like a downside.

"The next generation of cobblers isn't just repairing boots" is a better title.

So, since it's become more fashionable to make things recyclable and re-usable, why not mandate that makers of athletic footwear make them so that they can be repaired -at least swap in new soles. Else they get taxed with an enviro-impact fee.

The soles tend to be the first things to go, mesh uppers also wear out. But it would be neat if they were resolable with ease and not have to, erm, shoehorn a solution.

What if X is more reusable than Y but Y is the thing that is on the books. Now you have to lobby the government. Fun. Also, it's very hard for a bureaucrat or anyone else to make a judgement on what is going to be the most efficient what to organise the blue economy. Every day people invent new things, my understanding is that recycling and re-ellasticing bio-polymer is there way to go, but time will tell.

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