There are fewer and fewer shoemakers in Brabant, but the customers keep coming. Due to rising prices and growing attention to sustainability, people are going to the shoemaker again more often. The workload became too high for Breda shoemaker Jane Stevens (39): “It is a wonderful profession, but I have to think about my health.”
Until recently, Jane went to her shop on Nieuwstraat in Breda at eight in the morning. For sales and repair. She usually didn’t return home until around eleven o’clock. Four long days a week. And the shop door was locked for the remaining three days. This way she could patch the worn-out shoes of her customers in her workshop undisturbed.
“This can’t continue like this, things will go wrong soon.”
But the weekly catch-up was a heavy burden. Her body hit the brakes. “The crowds kept increasing. Suddenly I felt so dizzy that I couldn’t get up. I immediately thought of a burnout,” says Jane.
Together with her husband, who helps her in the store, she decided to slow down. “I had never had this before. I realized that I couldn’t continue like this any longer. Then things would really go wrong.” To lighten the workload, she had to say no to customers with worn-out shoes. “We have introduced a hiring freeze. We are first working through what we have lying around. Customers are welcome again in the new year. They do have to take longer waiting times into account,” says Jane.
“When sustainability is in the news, we see it in the number of customers.”
The shortage of shoemakers is a national problem. Due to the rising prices for new shoes, more and more people are having their old ones repaired. “Shoes have become so much more expensive in stores in recent years. More and more people are buying second-hand shoes and then having us refurbish them,” notes Jane. “Or they postpone buying a new pair.”
Sustainability plays a major role in that choice. “Because more and more people are making sustainable choices, a stream of new customers is coming without us having to do anything,” says Jane. If the discussion starts, she immediately notices it in her store. A good development, says Jane. “But now it’s skyrocketing.”
“Four colleagues in Breda are already quitting due to the workload.”
The lack of young professionals makes the situation even more difficult. “Before corona, many shoemakers stopped because they were retiring,” Jane remembers. “Now they stop because the workload is much too high. I already know four who have closed their doors because of this.”
Finding new staff does not appear to be a solution. “I’ve given up on that. They’re just not there,” she admits. So Jane is taking it a bit easier, but she shouldn’t think about stopping yet. “It remains a wonderful profession.”