Cobblers should be in vogue, according to Leslie Bateman, as trends shift toward combating consumerism and refurbishing old goods.
But Bateman, a former Uber executive and the co-founder of Coblrshop, said finding and working with cobblers in 2023 can be difficult. Many haven't kept up with the times.
Bateman and her co-founder Emily Watts of Sling and Toast, want to bring cobblers into the 21st century. Earlier this year they started Coblrshop, a Boston startup that wants to make repairing items like shoes and other leather goods easy.
“One, they’re all closing so finding one…is really hard,” Bateman said. “The cobblers are always wonderful. But it’s crowded, dusty shops, full of shoes, no POS, no computer system, no technology. And you kind of hand them something and they name a price and you have no idea (when it’s ready). They don’t even contact you. And you come back and maybe they find your shoes in the back.”
For customers, the process of repairing goods through Coblrshop is simplified through technology, Bateman explained. Customers submit a repair order online. They can select a full repair, essentially a heel to toe refresh on their shoes, or request a custom quote for specific issues. Within a few days they’ll receive an empty mailer bag, pre-paid UPS shipping label, instruction card and packaging material in their mailbox. After shipping the shoes off, the refurbished pair will arrive back to them within two weeks.
“We’re a service company that’s tech enabled, meaning that we’re trying to build a website, eventually an app, where it just makes it really easy for anybody to access repair,” Bateman said.
The shoes are mailed to a facility where they are reviewed and photographed by artisans. Bateman said these photos are being used to train AI to diagnose problems with products. This could eventually replace the repair options on the website with more customized cost estimates.
“We will get much better margins if we can properly diagnose repairs,” Bateman said.
The company is using a centralized approach to working with cobblers. Bateman said they’ve partnered with Ed Harytyunyan, owner of David’s Shoe Repair in Boston, to work with the cobblers at his two locations.
“They can handle significant throughput in terms of what we need to scale. Then the plan is as soon as that gets to the point that that facility is at capacity, the next step is actually investing in getting a whole centralized facility,” Bateman said.
The company takes a cut of the revenue from orders and also pays its cobblers.
Bateman said they went with this centralized approach because it would be “extremely complicated” to manage orders through many different cobblers. But they’re not trying to come into this industry and take it over, she said.
“I see it more as awareness of the industry because it’s at a time where shops are closing and closing and closing,” Bateman said. “It’s really not for lack of demand. It’s because people are not coming into the industry and current cobblers are at retirement age.”
In the future as the business grows, Bateman said they want to create a training and recruitment program to bring talent into this industry.
Coblrshop began accepting orders March 1 and takes orders from across the U.S.
In the coming months, Bateman said Coblrshop is focusing on building its database of product imagery for its AI model. The startup is also looking into partnerships with secondhand, resale or consignment companies. The goal is to offer repair services through Coblrshop when people purchase items from these companies.
“Everyone talks about resale. No one really talks about the repair that can make resale better,” Bateman said. “We are trying to hone in on that forgotten piece.”
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