Shoes are used by everyone and everywhere nowadays. Whether you have to go to school or any party or any business meeting. Wearing boots in your legs helps you in showing yourself as a gentleman in front of people. Humans started wearing shoes nearly about 40,000 years ago, probably much earlier than that, along-with the evolution of humans, they have also updated their luxuries and necessities. Have you ever thought, shoe repair business can be great business deal and majority of people those have less money for buying new footwear and those have branded costly shoes, it’s no possible for them to change immediately.
Shoes are one of them, shoes are now considered as a necessity of people. Now, it is natural that whatever you build, it will become useless and deteriorate after its continuous use. Buying new shoes everytime is not possible for everyone, so people choose an option to repair them.
Usually people search shoe repair near me, shoe repair shop near me or cobbler near me where they can get their shoe fix. But now when you have decided to start your own shoe repair shop, then you must have to grow your business in such a way.
so that people get recommendation of your shoe repair shop in their searches. But first of all you need investment to put in your shop to generate amazing results.
How Much it Costs to Start a Shoe Repair Business
The cost involved in opening a shoe repair business depends upon various factors, some of them are:-
- The cost of acquiring space for your shoe repairing shop.
- Cost of renting a shop.
- Purchasing working materials.
- Electrical expenses.
- Buying computer or laptop for taking online work.
- Cost of shipping the order.
- Purchasing shoe repairing equipments.
You can cut off the starting cost to a large extent by opening your shop with some business partners or you can take your friends also.
How Much Can You Earn By Repairing Old Shoes
You can earn enough in shoe repairing shop to recover your starting cost within a year and some extra months. After that you can invest your earnings in your previous shop to expand it more further. Earnings in shoe repairing shop ranges from $20,000 to $35,000, with an average earning of about $25,000.
- Nevertheless, your earnings depends upon various different factors, such as
- How much are you charging from your customers?
- How much are you spending in repairing one pair of shoes?
- How much are you spending in marketing of your shop?
- How many customers do you serve weekly?
- However, you can increase your earnings by providing quality work to people, also at a much cheaper rates than others.
What Are The Advantages of Shoe Repair Business
The first benefit you have in starting a shoe repairing shop is that, you don’t have to spend your money in making completely new shoes.You can easily arrange old rejected shoes from houses of people. You can collect a lot of them, then you can analyse them and find out what are the defects in them. After knowing the problem, you can amend it by replacing the sole or upper portion of it.
Then you can sell it to your customers at a very reasonable rates. This business also has sky as its earning limit. This business model is also not too complicated to understand.
What Are the Disadvantages of Shoe Repair Business
Some disadvantages of shoe repairing business are:-
- Your work can be tedious and sometimes boring.
- You have to spend a lot and lot of your time and energy in it.
- You have to repair your equipments time to time, which is an expensive process.
- You may earn less during a certain season, when shoes are not too much popular among people.
What Are the Skills and Knowledge Required For Starting Shoe Repair Business
Skills and knowledge are most important to start anything, whether it is a cobbler shop or a big company. To start a boot repair shop, you have to learn how to use shoe cobbling equipments. You have to learn how to fix a broken sole of a shoe, or how to do refurbishing of shoes completely.
Try to acquire knowledge about the quality of shoes and how to repair shoes to their highest quality. You have to learn how to prepare fashion boots, designer boots for women, fashion boots for women and many other, from old rejected shoes.
How To Acquire Skills And Knowledge To Repair Old Shoes
To acquire skills and knowledge in shoe repairing business, you can work with an experienced shoe cobbler for some time as an apprentice. At cobbler shop, you get the practical knowledge and develop your shoe repairing skills for real. If you don’t want to go to a cobbler shop, then there are various courses available in colleges to learn cobbling.
You have to search those colleges who have shoe repair or design program. If you are able to find out a school which can teach you cobbling or cordwaining, Then it will be the best place for you to acquire all the necessary skills for shoe repairing business.
For more knowledge, A degree or diploma in fashion designing or textiles can teach you a lot. Now, you are eager to know how to start, don’t worry, here is the complete step by step process to guide you to start an old shoe repairing shop.
1) plan your startup – This is the first step to start anything, either a business or a shop. As many great people says that you succeed or fail firstly on your minds and then in reality. You have to plan what is the working capital required to start from scratch. Would you start your shop alone or with partners.
How you sell your outcome
How you can minimize the expenses and increase your profits? And everything from the beginning to its growth and expansion, you have to plan in your mind.
2) Build a tea – It is not necessary in starting to have a team, you can start alone, by your own also, but, working in a team always proves to be helpful and productive, if you have your team under control. In starting your shop, the more partners you have, the less investment you have to do.
More people means more research, more information about market conditions, and as we all know that we are living in an information age.
Here, the most valuable thing is information. Working together saves a lot of your time, energy and money.
You only have to make sure that you can trust your team members.
3) Acquire a shop – It is the main work you have to do, you can either buy a new shop or else you can rent it. It is always advisable to rent a shop in starting.
However, it is not necessary to buy or rent a shop for your shoe repair business, you can do your boots repair work from your home also, but then you need some space to store old and new shoes, your repairing equipments and many other stuff.
And it requires a lot of efforts and brainstorming to manage old and torn out shoes, and it can affect the looks of your personal property. So, it is good to rent a shop at a public place.
if possible then you have to rent it at the beginning of the market are or in middle of the market area.
4) Collecting old shoes – This is the process which provides you your raw material to work on. You have to make a deal with your business partners that they all go to every home at different localities and collect rejected shoes from them.
Support them by collecting old shoes or doing repairing work by yourself. You got those rejected shoes very easily because no one uses them and they are just waste for people, and generally housewives do not allow anyone to store scratch in their houses not even their kids.
So they will provide you with your raw materials.
5) Repair them – After getting the old shoes, you have to repair them. If you are the only owner of your shop, then you have to do it by your own, and if you have partners with you, then they are the one who can help you in repairing shoes.
You can also hire cobblers at cheap rates to help you in repairing shoes, or else you can outsource your work to other agency or different cobblers, so that you can focus on more crucial works such as marketing of your shoes. Building a better Goodwill in the market, expanding your existing business.
6) Register your shop – Now, when you have rented your shop and settled your business. So you have to make it a separate entity, for that you have to register your shop.
You can register it under any of the forms such as
Corporation, limited liability company or sole proprietorship or anything you like.
If you have started your business with partners, then you can register your shop as a partnership firm. It is not compulsory if you want to do your business locally. But if you want to grow it further more, then registering your shop will be a smart choice by you.
7) Build a website
Building a website is smart option for those business owners who want to grow. A website is a very good source of doing marketing and advertising of your shop. Your potential customers can go to your website and can do research at their level, and find out the product they want.
This thing also tells you that the sales of which kind of products are increasing at an increasing rate, which helps you in increasing your profits by making those type of products. By building a website you get a public support of recycling wastes.
As political leaders are spreading awareness related to recycling products among public, by this thing, your shop will get an additional political boost to your sales.
