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Retailer looking for a shoe repair service offered to the trade


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Hi all

I'm involved in a business that is looking for a supplier who can provide shoe repair services to the trade, at wholesale prices, so that it can offer shoe repair services, e.g. resoling, to its customers, without actually doing them itself. 

If you have a workshop operating at scale for trade customers, please get in touch by replying to this message or direct messaging me

Thanks

Jamie

 

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Probably another dry cleaners trying to make a dollar of one of you lots back. 

If you want to make money from shoe repairs, learn it, invest in it, and set it up yourself I say. 

Shame to all the people doing contract work for other businesses at a pittance. 

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You would be better off just approaching a local cobbler, one of them might be interested. I opened my shop, just doing watch and Jewellery repairs (20 years ago) moved into key cutting. Obviously, customers assumed I did shoe repairs. I approached two cobblers, one wasn't interested, the other didn't mind. I did not push discount hard, or even at all. He charges me a bit less than normal customers, I make a profit by just charging more, because my shop is in a busy commuter station, and I can charge more. It's also really good for the selling of shoe care products.

I now do most stilettos myself, it's  the main market, but I still send him quite a bit of work. It's  worked really well for probably 12 years ( at least), he does a great job.  I always keep the jobs simple, only reheeling and resoling. Anything else, I redirect to the cobbler, or the other cobbler that turned me down initially. It's a fairly good relationship with the three of us.

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I have a friend less than 1/4 mile from me and he is CHEAP (stupidly cheap in fact) i have considered ditching all my gear and getting him to do shoe repairs for me.

This week i have taken nearly £4500 + whatever i take today and less than £200 of that was on shoe repairs. Key cutting and Lock sales are just escalating for me at the moment and that is where the money and profit lies.

BUT my dad started his working life as a shoe repairer and that still holds a historical part of our business and why we are still trading so i am loathed to get rid of the equipment plus the dismantling of the shop and shop front to get it all out but i think it might be the way forward in the long run for me.

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years ago I had one, after about 6 months or so it became VERY apparent how bad he was, always struggled to get paid with every excuse i've ever heard..

kicked him out and would never take another one.

he was a dry cleaning company - since then I have been asked to take cleaning in from 3 or 4 different companies and turned them down flat! Yes business is business but once bitten twice shy.

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16 hours ago, jamiemw said:

Hi all

I'm involved in a business that is looking for a supplier who can provide shoe repair services to the trade, at wholesale prices, so that it can offer shoe repair services, e.g. resoling, to its customers, without actually doing them itself. 

If you have a workshop operating at scale for trade customers, please get in touch by replying to this message or direct messaging me

Thanks

Jamie

 

Offering wholesale prices.....ha ha ha ,i'll offer you my normal prices paid up front, you can add a % for yourself to cover your costs in collection/delivery.

Who in their right mind would give their time away for less, a £55 sole and heel takes the same amount of time as a £25 sole and heel

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5 minutes ago, mathews said:

Shoe repairers with the shoe repairers

Dry cleaners with the dry cleaners

They been trying to chip away at us for years. 

Do we try it with them? No!

ever seen the adam sandler film   he asks dustin Hoffman  " who are  our enemys"   " dry cleaners " dustin  replys

 

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1 hour ago, x minit uk said:

Mister minit biggest mistake was taking on Sketchley dry cleaners, some bright spark switched the management and had sketchley managers running shoe repair shops and vice versur . Minit were paying out 1000s of £ in compensation due to dry cleaning complaints.

History repeating itself.

now timpson got “timpson university” coming

didnt minit have a place similar?

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Started doing work for a local dry cleaner (10 miles away)  around 3 years ago & been fine. We do a 10% discount & they charge 10% more than our prices. All depends on the people you work with i find, if i don't like them i won't work with them. Simple but effective for me. He gets 20% for being a middle man & is happy with that. We have a good working relationship. Once the price & details where sorted out we had him in the shop for a day to see what to look for when a customer brings in a pair of shoes. Also so he can see the amount of work that goes into some repairs. So it save us calling them, to call the customer about a extra charge for build up for example.

If there has been an issue we're sorted out quickly & respectively. As for example last week we had a "return" of a zip repair on a  a riding boot, the right boot, from a couple of weeks ago. The zip repair was terrible, zip not straight, brown zip with a black runner, wrong colour stitching thread, not using the original holes when restitching ect ect. The main problem we had is that we repaired the left boot zip not the right. We take pictures of before & after repairs so we just forwarded the picture of the left boot. We got a phone call from the dry cleaner to minutes later saying exactly what he thought but he couldn't prove it. I explained we take photo's for this exact reason & in future that's what he's going to do to save sending bits back & wasting both our time. (Side note we got to redo the job on right boot to put it right, the customer suddenly remember that the had the other boot repair a few years ago from someone else...:roll:)

I did also had another dry cleaners i did work for about a year on the same deal. Lovely people but had a few problems with drop offs & time scales, i.e i need a full leather sole repair & expecting it done in half hour. So we parted ways. If another local dry cleaner was to ask i would consider it.

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opened the first ever d/c laundry shoe key engrave etc

long before mr timpson 

this was in Scotland

had largest independent company, first ever heel bar in asda(sotland)

first ever in tesco(scotland) anyone who know,s me .

also know,s what happened

created as an all in one business worked well as an add on waste of time

 

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On 3/15/2019 at 7:04 PM, mathews said:

Probably another dry cleaners trying to make a dollar of one of you lots back. 

If you want to make money from shoe repairs, learn it, invest in it, and set it up yourself I say. 

Shame to all the people doing contract work for other businesses at a pittance. 

why shame I have several contracts that bring in good money that I wouldnt have Your just blinkered to what possibilties are out there

 

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On 3/16/2019 at 10:59 AM, St.Am92 said:

Offering wholesale prices.....ha ha ha ,i'll offer you my normal prices paid up front, you can add a % for yourself to cover your costs in collection/delivery.

Who in their right mind would give their time away for less, a £55 sole and heel takes the same amount of time as a £25 sole and heel

I do agree with that I dont do a 50 quid job for 25 they can put the mark up on

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