Mike Flood sits at his desk at the end of a brightly lit, cluttered-but-clean office tunnel that leads from the entrance of his Shoe Tech store on Ninth Street in downtown Wilmington to where he is mending a pair of loafers. Although both sides of his narrow shop are lined with assorted sewing machines and other instruments of repair, Flood works with a handheld Knipex, a cutting tool he calls “my third hand.”
The shop, located between Orange and Shipley streets, has been Flood’s work home since 1997, a time when there was still a bookstore and a bustling camera shop just across the street. At 60 years young, Flood says he hopes to be here a few more years.
“I don’t have the same business the way it was when men wore dress shoes and women in offices wore heels,” the genial craftsman says, “but there is still traffic coming through the door.” If business has slowed, Flood says he’s also changed his pace. “It used to be people would come in with shoes in the morning and ask for them back that afternoon. Now I do it more at my own speed.”
He has, nevertheless, cultivated a devoted clientele through the years as well as built up a niche category repairing bulky, complex firefighter boots, both locally and for a national company that rents boots to first responders. While the trend toward dress shoes has slowed, he notes many young men today buy classic dress shoes on eBay and then have him customize them as fashion statements to wear the way they do vintage watches.
“I also get expensive bags to repair, like this vintage Louis Vuitton,” Flood says, holding up a large duffle. “I’m making these leather replacement straps that look like the originals.”
Flood came to the craft early. When he was a 10th-grade student hitchhiking to a job at IHOP near the Echelon Mall in New Jersey, a neighbor picked him up and offered him a part-time job in his shoe repair shop. “Friends I knew loved working for him,” Flood says, “and so I said yes.”
He has been a shoe repairman—a term he prefers to “cobbler”—or working in the shoe business ever since, including a stint as a regional rep for a company that sold shoe-repair machines. He came to Delaware—“I knew nothing about the state,” he notes—in 1986 to open a Fast Feet franchise kiosk in the Concord Mall. He worked for that company until 1991, when he bought the Wilmington store and renamed it Shoe Tech.
“Market Street was a pedestrian mall then, and the only foot traffic we got at that location was the lunchtime crowd,” Flood says. In 1997, he purchased the current store from a woman who sold children’s clothing there. But the 1990s represented a high-water mark for downtown commerce, a time when DuPont, MBNA, and other corporations employed thousands of downtown office workers from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week.
A second jolt came years later with COVID-19. As a result of the pandemic, far fewer people commute to the office every day—and they tend to dress more casually when they do. Flood still keeps a weekday schedule of 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and also does business by mail and through a network of drop-off points around New Castle County, mostly at dry cleaning establishments.
“Before COVID, I hired a person one day a week to pick up shoes and drop them off,” he says. “Now my wife does that.”
No one is waiting in the wings to take over when he retires, Flood says. “I would welcome someone who would like to hang out and learn the business,” he says, “but so far that hasn’t happened.” And if no one shows up? “That would break my heart,” he says. “I know a lot of people, and if I’m not here, they won’t have anyone to help them with their shoes.”
Related: 10 Spring Activities for Kids and Families in Delaware
