Every ring of the bell on the door brings a new story for Bruce Lawson, proprietor of Lincoln Shoe Repair in Cranston.
There’s the guy who bought a pair of shoes at Cole Haan in Newport and asked the salesperson at the store to recommend a repair shop. Since then, the man has mailed his shoes to Lawson for repairs – from California.
There’s the woman who didn’t recognize her boots when she came to pick them up after being polished and repaired. She argued with Lawson, insisting they weren’t hers. They were.
And then there’s the Rhode Island family that moved south to North Carolina, but still brings their shoes up for repairs every summer when they come back to the Ocean State to visit.
"My wife laughs at me, because I can talk to anybody," said Lawson, who has repaired shoes, belts, backpacks and other leather items for 15 years, first at his shop on Cranston’s Park Avenue, and since 1992, on Reservoir Avenue, just off Route 10. "I love my customers. Many have become friends."
Sixteen years ago, after 10 years as a mechanical designer – first for Polaroid, then as an independent contractor – Lawson was eager for change. As a contractor, "I was tired of trying to find jobs," he said.
Lawson started working with and learning the shoe repair trade from an uncle who owns a similar shop in Boston. Lawson said his training took about a year.
"You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do it, but you have to care about what you’re doing and take the time to do it right," he said. "I work on everything like it’s mine. That way, I don’t get any complaints."
Lawson purchased Lincoln Shoe Repair in 1987. The shop’s founder, Lawson said, was an Italian gentleman, an immigrant who opened the shop in 1941 and named it after Abraham Lincoln to ‘Americanize’ himself. Lincoln Shoe Repair was just one of several similarly named shoe repair shops at one time, Lawson said, Washington Shoe Repair, etc.
Lawson said his background with machines has proved useful.
"I can fix all my own machinery," he said. "You can’t find anybody to do that anymore."
In addition to shoe and leather repairs, Lawson also does quite a bit of specialty work. Custom leather doorknobs and leather wheelchair rim covers are just a couple of things he’s worked on lately, he said.
Lawson said the hours he puts in vary, and described his craft as "labor-intensive. Everything you do, you do by hand."
The loss of street parking spaces outside the store when Reservoir Avenue was widened has proved a challenge to customers, who must now find parking on side streets or chance stopping in front of the store with hazard lights blinking.
"That’s the only drawback to this location now," said Lawson, who relies on the convenience of the location to other commercial destinations and word-of-mouth recommendations for business.
Because people tend to use the shoe repair shop in their own neighborhood, Lawson said his biggest competition comes not from other repair shops but from the appeal of less-expensive shoes to many consumers.
"I have a knack for fixing things, (but) it’s not the business I would have gone into if I had known what was going to happen with all the cheap shoes coming into the country. It’s killing me," he said. "The mid-1990s was really when it started."
Leaner economic times once meant people would opt to repair shoes rather than buy new, "but now, people say ‘I’ll buy a cheap pair and get by with it for a while,’" Lawson said. "A lot of times you can’t fix them because of the materials. That’s why advertising doesn’t work in this business. You have to teach people about it."
Many people still do purchase quality, he said, but "others, they’re going out spending $40, $50 every six months. They don’t even realize it. People don’t realize how much money they can save, buying a better shoe and repairing it."
As a result, Lawson said the number of independent shoe repair shops has thinned in the years since he’s been in business.
"In 1987, there were about 40 in the (phone) book," he said. "Now, there are a dozen, if you’re lucky . . . There are not that many people going into it anymore. I was talking to a dairy farmer down where I live (Aquidneck Island), and he said ‘We’re both in the same boat.’"
