Thirty-eight years ago Chris Kydes was a fireman and not interested in leaving the fire house, then one day he received a phone call to buy Village Shoe Service. To be polite, Kydes went to the shop and right away felt at home with memories of polishing shoes for his fathers shop coming to him. Then he brought me up to the old shop and as I walked in the door, I smelled that old smell and it caught me, Kydes said.
That experience changed Kydes mind and he bought the shop, and even at 70 he still owns and operates the shop everyday. Over the decades it changed its name and location three times before becoming Wilton Shoemaker on Danbury Road. The name was changed because with more people passing by Kydes wanted people to know where they were and what the shop did.
Kydes father had a shoemaking shop in Great Barrington, Mass., where he learned how to make and repair shoes, now Kydes is beginning to pass it down to the third generation of Kydes men, as his son Dan, 22, who currently works part-time as the only employee of the Wilton Shoemaker and will take over the business once his father is ready to step aside.
In the almost four decades Kydes has had the shop he has seen many different styles of shoes come along and has had to learn how to treat the different materials and figure out how each shoe is made so he can figure out how to fix it. Although, he admits it is difficult to keep track of he went on to say, The time I have been in here there has been virtually no innovations in shoes.
The combination of high operating costs and a lot of physical work involved there are fewer and fewer shoemaking shops around, but that does not have Kydes worried for the future of his shop because he is willing to repair any and every kind of shoe that comes in and he has customers bringing him shoes from all over including Florida where customers of his had retired, but still have Kydes take care of their shoe needs. This has become a Wilton mainstay, Kydes said, Parents used to bring their kids in, now their kids are bringing their kids in.
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