When he realized he couldn’t find a pair of quality men’s shoes, Greek-American George Vlagos decided to make his own. Currently, there is a six-week waiting list for his shoes.
When George Vlagos was in middle school, his father John, who worked as a cobbler, would take him into their shop in Chicago to shine shoes. This way, he would show his son that manual work is difficult and that he should get an education to find a better job.
Eventually, young George studied English and got his masters degree. However, when he realized that his job couldn’t get him a nice pair of men’s shoes, he decided to get involved in the family business.
“I didn’t have particularly crazy expectations,” says Vlagos, “I wanted a shoe made in America, full grain leather, at a reasonable price. I was really surprised that something that existed 20 to 30 years ago was disappearing.”
Moreover, his father had also seen a huge change in the shoes he was repairing as many of them were made out of plastic that couldn’t be resoled or had molded rubber soles that couldn’t be repaired or modified.
So Vlagos decided to design the type of shoe he was looking for, by himself. He found a shoemaker who would hand sew his creations and he purchased leather from the Chicago based Horween Leather Company, one of the oldest tanneries in the USA. On August 31, 2010, he launched his own company, Oak Street Bootmakers, and without any advertising he managed to sell out every shoe he had within 24 hours.
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