Training A New Generation of Cobblers

One of the world’s oldest professions now has a school in downtown Martinez.

Pablo Martinez recently relocated his store, Carlos Shoe Repair, in the old Chrysler auto dealership on Ferry Street. With all the extra space, he is planning to add a number of workers. But they won’t be employees – they will be students he will train in the art of being a cobbler.

It is a trade rapidly vanishing in today’s disposal world of cheap imported shoes, Martinez said.

“We are losing 10,000 shoe-repair shops every decade,” he said. “There are only 7,000 left in the United States. You do the math.”

To that end, Martinez is planning to recruit students from foster homes, ask the community to donate used shoes, purses and other leather clothing, and teach his charges to repair or recycle the material into new items. He already has one student who is thrilled to be learning the trade.

“Someone called me and said ‘Hey, do you want to be a cobbler?’ ” said Zach Krause, 21. “I didn’t even know what that was. I didn’t realize how far gone shoes could be and still be fixed. I didn’t even think about that.”

Krause quit going to Diablo Valley College to take on the apprenticeship at the shop full time because he said that college was not working out. He said that learning in a hands-on environment is far better for him than trying to learn in a classroom.

“Here, the first thing I did was tear apart a $200 shoe,” he said. “It took about a month to repair it. Now, I can do that in about two weeks. Pretty soon, it will only take a day. I can resole a shoe now. I want to get good enough to repair any problem. Every week I learn a lot of new things. I can see myself opening my own shop one day.”

“When you’re teaching someone who wants to learn, it’s worth it,” Martinez said of Krause. “He’s pretty smart. He gets it.”

Martinez is looking for more students and for sponsors to help him pay for equipment, transportation and other expenses.

Cobblers are not quite a dying breed, he said. But those who remain tend to be older and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of effort going into training new ones. Martinez hopes to reverse that trend.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to train the students and have them take over as the present cobblers retire,” Martinez said. “Most of the shops have been around for decades. They shouldn’t close down when the owner retires. There should be someone there to take his place.”