Footwear Insight

footwearinsight.com September/October 2022 ~ Footwear Insight • 23 RETAIL shoe store at the time, according to Dayton's 1922 city directory. The retail rivalry between two brothers commenced ten decades and five generations of Roderer Family ownership of independent shoe retail shops in the Buckeye State's sixth largest city that spawned as many as nine Roderer nameplates at one time as various descendants of George Sr. decided to try their hand in the retail footwear business. While there was at least one instance where a single Roderer owned more than one lo- cation, these ventures were largely single-door, unaffiliated operations. ey have operated, survived and even thrived through the 1913 Great Dayton Flood, two World Wars, two armed robberies, a 2019 Memorial Day Weekend F4 tornado that wiped out a downtown neighborhood and a two-year pandemic that forced a multi-month shutdowns and a move to appointment-only shopping. Family Legacy Today, there are two Roderer Family-owned shoe stores in op- eration in this metro area, some 45 miles north of Cincinnati and 65 miles west of state capital Columbus, owned by 4th- and 5th-generation descendants of George Roderer Sr. One is called Roderer Shoes Inc. and the other is Roderer Shoe Center. Mike Roderer, along with wife, Denise who serves as bookkeeper, and daughter, Rebecca, who works the store part-time when not teach- ing school, are the principals at the freestanding, 5,000-sq.-. Roderer Shoes, Inc. on North Main Street on Dayton's north side. Cousin Dan Roderer, 73, a former road shoe sales representative and the family his- torian, also pitches in. Meanwhile, brother and sister Chris and Emily Roderer operate the Roderer Shoe Center in a strip center on the south side of town. Wh i l e t h e t w o i n d e p e n d e nt Roderer retail operations are au- tonomous, their separate existences The original Roderer Shoes store, opened by George Roderer in 1906.

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