 I asked my dad once, when a Florsheim store around the corner was going out of business and a Famous Footwear just down the street was coming in, “Dad, how do we survive while all these other stores come and go?” He said, “Son, those other stores are just run by clerks who don’t really care. You’ve got to have someone there who is going to be there day in day out year after year who really cares about the success of the store.” It kind of made sense to me and the years have borne him out.
When I was a boy in my high school years, my Dad would come home in the evening and pour himself a Vodka on the rocks and say, “Son, don’t go into the shoe business.  It’s a hard business. The lying backstabbing sales reps, the disloyal greedy shoe companies, the meshugeneh customers. Find another line of work.” I nodded and made a mental note to heed his advice. But after 15 years of running away from the shoe business, fate (or was it destiny) had other plans. With a pretty new wife and a little one on the horizon, I came back. Shoes kind of get in your blood and coagulate there: their necessity and functionality, their luxury and style, the feel and smell of the leather. Everybody’s got to wear them. Once you start to love them it’s hard to leave them. Twenty five years later I’m still  here.
The Early Years: In the early years we had one storefront. It was about twenty feet wide and fifty feet deep and we carried only one brand, Red Cross Shoes. These were shoes tailored to the “more mature” woman who needed comfort but with modicum of style. In those days, it would not be uncommon to see three “more mature” women in the store at the same time, one in a wheel chair, one with a walker and the third sporting a quadripod cane. It was enough to make a young man weep. But business was good and when the Nancy Keith Candy store next door went out, Williams Shoes expanded and added another brand owned by U.S. Shoe called Selby Shoes. These were also more mature shoes but a little more stylish and higher priced. Business continued to thrive until 1990 when the optical shop just  adjacent to the west went out and Williams Red Cross and Selby Shoes once again expanded adding several other brands of shoes and also men’s shoes. The walking for health craze had just taken off so we called our new store The Walking Spirit.
The Next Generation: Right around the time of The Walking Spirit expansion, the founder, H. David reluctantly passe d the reigns to his son, Michael, who was about to take the old Evanston establishment into new and uncharted waters. Once in charge of the purse strings, Michael went a little bit crazy, buying whatever struck his fancy. If it was fun and funky, he bought it. If it  was classic and beautiful, he bought it. If it was different unique, he bought it. And slowly but surely Evanston and the surrounding communities began to dig it. They began to come to see what was new and fun and different and happening. Then we added some decorative critters to the ambience: some frogs, crocodiles, dinosaurs and then some Star Trek characters to the mix, Captain Kirk, Captain Picard, a little Frisbee Golf and the Exciting Adventures of Nabob. And that is how we came to be what we are now: the finest and funnest and best doggone shoe store from Chicago to Sheboygan. The store Where all your dream come shoe!
|
