News Photo/Jonathon M. Whitmore
Online Edition
Thursday, October 12, 2000
WEB Feet
News Photo/Jonathon M. Whitmore
Central Shoe Repair owner
Costas Tsoutsouras of Ipswich
checks his stock of clogs, which
he sells all over the world
through the Internet. Street.
See
'Local cobbler boasts
global clientele'
story in
Northshore
Local cobbler boasts global clientele
By TONIA NOELL MOLINSKI
News correspondent
IPSWICH -- Walk into Central Shoe Repair
across from the fire station and you feel as if
you've entered another era.
You feel that way at least until the phone rings,
and you learn someone is calling from Malaysia,
Japan, Brazil or maybe Spain, England or
Germany.
Why is the world shopping at a small cobbler
shop in the center of historic Ipswich?
At first glance, the shop appears to be a
throwback: Piles of well-worn shoes are
crammed into corners waiting their turn to be
re-soled or restored. The aroma of leather and
polish permeates the air. There is no outward
sign the cobbler shop is on the Internet
superhighway -- but it is.
The phone rings and a weathered hand uncradles
the receiver while the eyes of Ipswich's last
cobbler, Costas Tsoutsouras, still thoughtfully
explore a damaged clog lying on the bench near
his tools.
"Yes?" he says, listening.
This time the call is from someone in Florida --
not an Ipswich customer vacationing in the
Sunshine State but someone who has never set
foot in Massachusetts and simply stumbled on
Tsoutsouras' web site: www.centralshoe.com.
The conversation goes on ... five minutes, 10
minutes, 15. It is an endless discussion about
style, color and size. The woman is trying to
locate a clog in pink leather.
This is the secret hidden in this tiny cobbler's
shop: Tsoutsouras' is one of the few outlets
worldwide that sells top quality clogs on the
Internet.
Tsoutsouras answers each question, never
seeming to lose his patience as the minutes tick
by and the questions keep coming. Finally he
offers to send the Florida caller a color sample
snipped from a corner of the leather swatch he is
holding.
On the sidewalk, above the door hangs a
decorative sign in the form of a blue and yellow
Swedish flag. It seems to draw passersby like a
magnet, says Tsoutsouras, who years ago placed
this symbol of a clog company in his window. He
could see pedestrians' heads turn to look at it as
they passed by -- and got drawn into the store.
Tsoutsouras is of Greek descent. His father was
a cobbler before him, in this very store, which
opened in the 1920s.
His father died when Tsoutsouras was a
sixth-grader. During those hard years, his mother
would take shoes in during the day and
Tsoutsouras would come directly to the cobbler
shop after school and repair as many as he could
before supper.
Tsoutsouras, now 65, has been here ever since,
as a local merchant and community leader. He
was on the Conservation Commission for 20
years -- in fact he was one of its first members.
He and his wife, Bette, have brought up three
daughters who all live locally, a lawyer, a teacher
and a librarian.
And through it all, there have been shoes,
thousands of shoes.
"Sometimes I wonder," he says, shaking his
head. "I've been doing this for 50 years. Should
anyone be doing the same thing for 50 years?"
One of his daughters was actually instrumental in
Tsoutsouras' success, first by urging him to
venture into the clog business and then advising
him to use the Internet.
"Years ago," explains Tsoutsouras, "my daughter
had bought a pair of clogs that were very
uncomfortable, and I tried to find her a new pair.
So then this guy says to me 'why don't you sell
some in your shop?' So I tried it and that was
just about the time that clogs started to get real
popular again."
The shoe repair business has been slowly
declining over the years, says Tsoutsouras, who
still has many loyal customers and repairs
hundreds of pairs of shoes a year.
He recently repaired a clog that got chewed up
by a puppy. A new client, Jody Rosenbaum,
comes in to pick up her repaired leather sandals
and exclaims, "That's gorgeous! Beautiful!"
Rosenbaum explains she just moved to Ipswich.
"I heard he was great. I dropped these sandals
off before the moving van pulled into my
driveway," she says.
"We're not perfect," murmurs Tsoutsouras
modestly, but other customers disagree.
Many bring in shoes that need special orthotic
adjustments. One woman has a husband with a
shattered knee that needs one shoe adjusted for
height.
Another client has a foot with bone problems
and Tsoutsouras takes apart the sole to insert a
special NASA-type plastic to cushion her foot
and ease the pain.
"Every payday I'm in here buying clogs," says
Kristin Ryan, director of the Pre-school Patch at
the YMCA. "I have a whole house full of them
now."
Ryan is in the shop ordering clogs for her two
nieces, ages 4 and 5. The girls are dancing up
and down with excitement.
The excitement is also sizzling on the Net, where
Central Shoe sells up to two dozen pairs of clogs
a week.
"I can't believe how many hits my Web site gets
every week from all over the world," says
Tsoutsouras, who credits his daughter Mia, the
librarian who is on the faculty of Salem State
College, for designing his Web page as well as
helping him and Bette maintain it.
Apparently when people have a hard time finding
clogs in Europe -- where they live near the
manufacturers - and the rest of the world, they
turn to the World Wide Web and find Central
Shoe.
"With the Internet, people don't care where they
order them from. They probably don't even
know where Ipswich is," says Tsoutsouras, who
adds, "but I'm always surprised that even the
people in Europe order clogs from me!"