Spend a couple of moments with cobbler Carlos âAndyâ Galvez, and the Guatemalan shoemaker who lives and works in La Verne will have you in stitches.
Heâs got an opinion about everything and isnât afraid to voice it. Shoehorned into his Target Center shop plastered with signs, shoelaces, zippers, buttons, bags, purses, belts, stacks of shoes, and all the tools of his trade, including grinding, sewing, nailing and heavy duty stitching machines, you canât blame the man for wanting to vent.
Chinese-made products particularly drew his ire on a late Tuesday afternoon.
âI would put this on the record,â he said after serving a late surge of customers. âIf everybody signed and sent a petition to the people over there in Washington, and say listen, âWe have had enough of Chinese products, stop this immediately, we are destroying our lands and our reputation is going down the drain,â then we can start making shoes in the United States again.â
Carlos added that many cut-rate, corner-cutting shoe manufacturers today actually make shoe soles out of paper. âThey just paint over it, they paint it with black coatings, neutral coatings, and make it look like itâs leather.â
Of course, Carlos doesnât make shoes, he repairs them. If people started buying better quality shoes, like American-made Allen Edmonds shoes or Swiss-made Bally shoes, he figures more people would choose to repair their worn loafers and pumps than toss them in the dumpster.
âWhy are you going to throw away a $350 pair of Allen Edmonds?â he asks. âDo you have $350 to buy a new pair? Your mortgage has to be paid, your car payment is due, your insurance is due, you have your childâs college to pay for ⌠ridiculous.â
Like a good surgeon, which he once trained to be, he can stitch or patch together just about anything from luggage to baseball gloves to leather briefcases, and make them look better than when they first came off the retail shelf. He started in the shoe business when he was 12 and while he went to college, he said he could never get the business out of his blood.â
âItâs the family trade, he said.
His customers are glad he stayed true to the family craft.
After applying a spit shine to a pair of boots, lawyer Cedric Elias, who also owns Tonyâs Beef Dip in Pomona, walked in with a pair of beat-up loafers that he wanted restored. Eliasâ father-in-law was John Nabarette, who ran a successful shoe repair business in the 1950s and 1960s and taught the shoe repair trade at Chino State Prison. Once, over dinner, Elias said Nabarette asked to see a pair of shoes that he had taken to the shoemakerâs.
âWho did these for you?â Nabarette asked. âThis is the best job Iâve ever seen.â
The next day Nabarette drove to La Verne to meet Carlos and befriended him.
âMy father-in-law said Carlos was the best cobbler, next to him, that he ever saw,â Elias said, grinning.
Whether Carlos is shining, stretching or re-soling your shoes, he insists he uses only the highest quality products.
âEverything I use in my shop is quality,â he said. âEverything comes from Europe. My soles are Italian, my heels are Italian, the rubber on the bottom of the stiletto heels is made in Germany. I donât carry Chinese products.â
Carlos attracts business because heâs good, and because there arenât a lot of his kind around anymore. Now 50, he says heâll close up shop, God willing, in another 30 years, with no expectations that his son will take over the business.Â
Indeed, sometimes Carlos attracts too much business, and pays the price for it when his customers want their shoes “yesterday.”
âWe take a battering,â he said. âPeople get really horrible. They raise hell on you, they want to kill you, they are very rude.
âNow they have these ratings on the computer. They are going to badger you, trash you, they disrespect you. When you do something nice, nobody talks about it. They should appreciate they still have a cobbler in the neighborhood.â
Carlos’ shoe shines and spit shines run between eight and $10. Or you can do it yourself. Carlos sells not only shoeshine kits, but also dyes, horse hair brushes, laces, shoe trees and other accessories.
If you donât see them at first, rest assured theyâre buried somewhere in a chest of drawers, hanging on a wall or tucked away in a storage room.
At the end of each year, Carlos donates unclaimed stock to the Goodwill, but even this act of generosity get his blood up.
âI donât even get a deduction, he said. âMy CPA already deducted the price of the sole,,the glue, the labor. Thereâs nothing more to deduct. I lose on everything else.â
But customers wonât lose bringing in their tired and worn out soles to Carlos. Youâll get your shoes looking like a new again and youâll get an earful to ponder for the remainder of your day.
Enjoy a pest-free spring and summer. Call A Tovar Termite and Pest Control today in La Verne today: (909) 599-2345
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