By Andrew Waslh
awalsh@wbcowqel.com
When asked what motivated him to go into business for himself in 1989, Dick Hulsmeyer provided a very straightforward answer, “I wanted to be self-employed.” Flash forward 25 years and what started as a desire to be his own boss has developed into a long career, and has continued the tradition of shoe retail and repair in Bucyrus.
Hulsmeyer is the proprietor of American Shoe Service, a Red Wing Merchant and full service shoe repair shop. Prior to Hulsmeyer taking over it had been owned by Kenneth Landis for at least 30 years, and he was not the founder. This long standing presence of a work boot and repair shop surely owes itself to the history of agricultural and industrial work that has been a mainstay of the area, and Hulsmeyer is proud to carry on this tradition.
Originally hailing from Bodkins, Ohio, Hulsmeyer moved here for a job at the now defunct Ziegler Milling Company. He had studied Ag-Business at Clark Tech in Springfield, OH and took a job in Bucyrus working customer service for the mill. He spent a decade at the mill, eight years with Ziegler and a further two when it became Linn Acres, before taking the plunge into the world of retail.
“I saw a sign in the window.”
Dick was once again straight to the point when asked how the ball got rolling in his purchase of the store. Although he did not necessarily possess a firm timeline for when he wanted to go into business for himself, he had been obviously been thinking about it when he walked past the For Sale sign in the shop window of American Shoe Service. He walked in, spoke to Landis, and a year later the store was his.
This is not to trivialize what happened during that year between seeing the sign and sealing the deal. While passing the sign may have been serendipitous, this was not a transaction completed on a whim. Hulsmeyer called it a year of, “thinking, deciding, and questioning.”
His reflections took him back to his childhood where he, “Grew up on a farm with Red Wing on my feet.” He combined the nostalgia with the practical skills he had learned in customer service. He knew he liked working with people and that he liked retail.
“This is something I could do,” Huslmeyer reflected.
While the primary focus of his business is the retailing of Red Wing work boots, he has developed a skill that has a long history and tradition: cobbling. Hulsmeyer added that one of his friends jokingly refers to him as “the cobbler.”
Jokes aside, Hulsmeyer, and his employee Steve Barr, are skilled shoe repairmen and it is an integral part of the business. In an age when so many products have become disposable, repair shops may seem an antiquated notion. However, in the sturdy world of work boots there are still plenty of occasions when repairing is the more economical choice than buying new.
There are also, obviously, times when repair is not the more economical choice, and Hulsmeyer added, “We don’t repair shoes we shouldn’t.”
Despite this, he says there are clients who love a certain pair of shoes so much that they prefer to pay to have them repaired than to purchase new.
Aside from his store on Sandusky Avenue in Bucyrus, Hulsmeyer operates a mobile business. This is exactly how it sounds, he has truck that travels around to different businesses and sells boots directly to the employees. They typically spend a day at one of the entrances, and works come out before and after shifts, or at breaks and lunch, to buy their next round of work boots. This is a way for Hulsmeyer to provide service to an entire factory in one day. He has contracts with 25 businesses, four of them in Bucyrus, that he visits from once a year for some and up to quarterly for others.
“It’s been a real asset,” Hulsmeyer said, “Essentially having two stores without having two brick and mortar stores.”
As the conversation wound down, Hulsmeyer took the time to reflect on what the most rewarding part of his two and a half decades has been.
“It’s got to be the customers. The number of people I’ve gotten to meet and the number of families I’ve gotten to work with. I’ve been very lucky. It took work, and luck, and a good supplier like Red Wing.”