Footwear Insight

20 • Footwear Insight ~ May/June 2022 footwearinsight.com Shoe Fly Creates a Buzz PROFILE RETAIL "Our best strategy is to make sure your in-store experience is worth getting off the couch and driving 20 miles for." Todd Lewis, president By Bob McGee T he term "Shoe Fly" has been in the vernacular of most Pennsylvanians since the invention of the sticky, molasses-based pie in 1876. But it took on added significance for citizens from Pittsburgh to York, PA in 1999. at's the year that the independent chain, Shoe Fly Shoe, Inc. was born. In the 23 years since, Shoe Fly retail lore has grown across the Keystone State as the business has expanded through the acquisition of two in- dependent family shoe businesses, the conversion of two former New Balance stores, the 2019 purchase and expansion of the Appalachian Running Company (App Run Co.), and the addition of two "Work Zone" concept stores adjacent to Shoe Fly doors. "Our stores are, by and large, in conservative areas," says Todd Lewis, president of the parent company, which now manages 11 Shoe Fly stores, seven in Pennsylvania and two in both Maryland (Frederick and Rockville) and Virginia (Charlottesville and McLean), four App Run Co. stores and the Work Zone doors. "I would say our shoes have to bring value. We don't have a luxury (shoe) business or (an assortment) targeting the affluent." Cliché or not, the heart and soul of Shoe Fly are its ties to independent family shoe stores and its dedication and focus on the full-service 'sit and fit' experience when so many rivals are chasing more impersonal ecommerce sales today. e company hasn't ruled out taking part of its business online, but it's not a "high priority" today. "Our best strategy is to make sure your in-store experience is worth getting off the couch and driving 20 miles for," commented Lewis. In late May 2021 when Shoe Fly acquired the third-generation Gordon's Shoes in Homestead, PA, outgoing owner Chuck Gordon told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle that Shoe's Fly's owners "have the same family values I do, and customers will still be serviced with the same staff they've always had." In its purchase agreement, Shoe Fly, which currently employs 15 certified pedorthists, agreed to retain 17 former Gordon's Shoes employees. Lewis, a 1991 Penn State grad, and a National Shoe Retailers Association (NRSA) board member since 2004, knows more than a thing or two about the independent, family-owned busi- ness. In his first year of college, he began working for Morris Levine Family Shoe in Tyrone, PA and has never le the building, purchasing the business two years later at age 19. Today, 36 years later, the store there has been relocated to nearby Altoona under the Shoe Fly banner and the Tyrone building now houses Shoe Fly Shoe's corporate offices. Five of the six owner-partners of Shoe Fly grew up working in shoe stores, managing a shoe retail opera- tion, or working in one, Lewis proudly proclaims. e ownership group in- cludes the father-son tandem of Greg and Mark Wagner. Greg Wagner is the chairman of Shoe Fly Shoes and the president of Wagner Quality Shoes in Lawrenceville and Monroeville, PA. George Gripp and Charles Biddle, the fourth and fih Shoe Fly Shoe partners, also have ties to independent shoe stores as younger men. IT and graphic arts specialist Russ Buchmann is the sixth partner in the business. Like many retailers at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Shoe Fly stores that average 6,000- sq. . were forced to go dark for weeks The growing Shoe Fly busi- ness was found- ed in 1999.

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