After dinner most nights and during the day on most Mondays, his day off, Colonial Shoe Repair owner and cobbler Stephen Villari makes his way back to his shop to finish up some sewing on his manual Singer and electric cross-stitch machines.
It’s a short trip from home, literally just steps away. He and his wife, Diane, live in an apartment above the East Greenwich shop and they own the building outright. His wife runs Hair Plus, a salon, in the building’s other storefront.
“It’s really a great advantage being right there” in the same building, said the 67-year-old Mr. Villari.
The couple’s businesses and home could be seen as a model of the principals for sustainable and “smart growth,” as defined by the nonprofit advocacy group Grow Smart Rhode Island. It mixes land uses, is part of a “walkable, pedestrian-friendly” community and is in the middle of a village center.
And although the shoe-repair industry has been slowly fading for decades, Villari’s shop is still doing well. He credits that to low overhead.
“We’re stable,” he said. “I’m not disappointed because in the last almost 40 years I’ve been through three major recessions and most customers coming through the door seem to think that I do much better because of a recessionary period.”
To some extent, he said, that’s true because many customers decide to fix their shoes instead of buying a new pair.
“But as the economy goes down, I go down also,” he added. “I haven’t had as good a year as I had the previous year.”
This year, his business is down about 5 percent, he added.
“But that could be the weather – maybe I just need a lot of cold weather” when people wear their shoes out quicker, he said. “The hotter it gets, the slower it gets.”
Villari taught himself how to cobble after a stint in the shoe department at Sears, he said. He’s had a shop in East Greenwich for 25 years, following a 14-year stint in the Fairlawn neighborhood of Pawtucket. And the shoe-repair business has changed significantly since he got his start.
The physical setup of his business and his wife’s business, which she says is also doing well, no doubt has led to Colonial being one of the 15 remaining shoe-repair businesses in the state.
Villari wasn’t sure how many shops were around when he opened up, “but a supplier once said to me that [at one time] there were 23 shoe- repair shops just on Cranston Street” in Cranston and Providence, he said.
Diane Villari has been cutting and styling hair for about 15 years next door. Living and working in the same place allows the couple to use only one car, which is mostly just for running errands, she said.
“We don’t have to commute to work. We just have to come downstairs,” she said. “So we always work, whether it’s snowing or not, we’re here. We have no excuse.”
But both acknowledged that their arrangement might not work in other locations.
Their location, on East Greenwich’s Main Street, has allowed them the chance to develop regular customers. That was apparent one recent morning, just before 9 a.m., when Ron Clement, who lives nearby, came to Colonial and wanted to know if he should have his shoes re-heeled.
Villari knew Clement by name when he came in and had an answer for him: he didn’t know. “You want me to stand on a dime and tell you whether its heads or tails,” he joked, meaning he couldn’t make such a decision for a customer without checking. Fixing the shoes would cost $38, he said.
“I’m always measuring whether I should buy a new pair or have these fixed, you know?” Clement said. After mulling over the price, he decided to have the $90 shoes fixed. “When I’m trying to decide, I always go to the cobbler first,” he said later.
And, as Clement was leaving, he poked his head back in the door.
“I’m going across the street for a cup of coffee – Do you want anything?” he said.
“No, later maybe,” Villari said, before getting back to work. •
