Name: The Shine Box
Based: London
Website: www.theshineboxlondon.com
The Shine Box is a modern day shoeshine and repair service whose aim is to make the highest quality shoe care a standard part of the London lifestyle, while creating the most convenient experience possible for the busy city dweller.
We honour London’s couturier and cordwainer traditions in a fresh way that serve a wider range of people and accommodate the demands of modern urban life, as well as providing an alternative to throwaway culture.
We started by hustling the other mums on the school run and to our surprise it started spreading to friends of friends and so on. We weren’t sure if/where retail fitted in so we did a four-month pop-up at Bank Tube station. We found that people really valued a professionalised service and quickly got over any Dickensian notions they had - we serviced over 2,500 pairs of shoes!
A great many of our customers also told us that they also really liked the idea of us coming to straight to them wherever they are.
Now armed with a 700-person customer list and 20 new office clients, we are refocusing on mobile services. We think there is still need for retail but we’ll revisit this channel in the future.
Using the service is easy. Ring when you are ready and we come to any home office or hotel in London. We shine shoes on the spot or take them away to be worked on elsewhere. Shoeshines are returned in hours and repairs are returned in 48 hours.
Vanessa Jacobs is owner of The Shine Box
