This history of how Mountainfeet was started and then evolved into a footwear and foot health specialist shop was written by Si back in 2015.
We hope it’s of interest to anyone who shopped with us in either Oldham or Marsden – just bear in mind the article is written in the present tense and doesn’t reflect that Mountainfeet actually closed back in December 2022…
My specialist outdoor footwear shop Mountainfeet wasn’t born as such, it evolved over time. In fact if ten years ago you’d have told me I’d be majoring in footwear sales and foot health solutions I’d have said you were having a laugh! But times change in ways we can’t always predict and by adapting to those changes we often find new directions in our working lives…
Mountainfeet is a small but highly specialised destination footwear retailer in the Pennine village of Marsden where I also happen to live. Our ethos is to attempt to provide the very best in service to committed outdoor enthusiasts who can see past the pile it high and sell it cheap temptation of the recent crop of internet and warehouse style stores.
To get to where we are now has been a financially and emotionally painful experience which started in 2002 when I bought into an ailing independent outdoor clothing and equipment shop called Paul Braithwaites in Oldham that had been almost brought to its knees by the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001. I had previously climbed and mountain biked with the owner and to keep what had been a well respected emporium trading he needed an injection of cash and new energy. I’d been an Alpine ski instructor for several years abroad and had a mountaineering background which he found useful in developing additional specialist areas of expertise within the shop.
For three years, Garry and I rubbed along famously in most ways, although we used to fall out with regard to technology and its employment within what Garry saw as a traditional small shop environment. Having also worked for many years in IT for IBM, my rationale was to utilise easily affordable computers and software not only for the usual back office tasks but also on the sales floor to bring us into the twenty first century. I wrote systems for ordering, EPOS and other labour saving aids. Could I persuade Garry as senior partner to implement them though? I think you already know the answer!
This was a source of slight irritation but one thing Garry had cleverly identified was that the heart of our shop through thick and thin seemed always to be our footwear room. However, I remember in the early days doing everything possible to steer clear of it and letting him or the other staff deal with boot and shoe sales – luckily, that fear of footwear wouldn’t last too long…
Anyway, ultimately Garry moved on to professional pastures new and I committed (for better or for worse!) to buying his share of the shop so we wouldn’t have to dissolve the business. In hindsight that might not have been the smartest move…
I think we can guess the rest given that this was around 2004… To be honest, at first things seemed fairly rosy. I had cultivated great staff, we dabbled in a couple of niche sports like ski mountaineering and our reputation grew. But I think the writing was on the wall for us in many ways. Bear in mind that at that time, we stocked a huge inventory – everything from tent pegs to skis and huge amounts of technical clothing which had to be forward ordered and produced a frightening financial commitment.
Still, we saw that the one constant through our ups and downs was our boot room and mused on this. My three full time staff and I sat down and decided that while our service selling footwear was polite and informed from a sporting angle, our fitting skills left something to be desired. We immediately decided to act on that and initially enrolled everyone on a Superfeet course which taught us a little more about foot physiology and galvanised our interest in biomechanics of the lower limbs.
From there, our experience and reputation grew. We developed relationships with a couple of local podiatrists and took further training with them. We questioned and debated medical issues and fine tuned a new procedure for fitting footwear which we documented for potential customers on our website. Key to this methodology was the principle that everyone buying shoes should receive an informal biomechanical foot health appraisal from us. To provide the credentials we needed and develop confidence within our customer base we took more training which culminated in one of our staff, Phil, achieving a podiatry degree and two others (myself included) qualifying as foot health practitioners.
Now customers were visiting from further and further away as our service offering evolved to more expert levels. It seemed as if we’d found the vital ingredient that would help us prosper, where by now, so many other independents like us were closing or going downhill. And then, just as we thought we’d bucked the recession, the axe blade fell hard on our neck…
After winning our Town Council’s retailer of the year award twice on the trot as well as a national retailing award, the euphoria turned to dread when the same Council announced plans for the redevelopment of our town centre and the introduction of a Metrolink system. Despite protestations from all manner of businesses located in Oldham that many of us wouldn’t survive the four years of disruption, the works went ahead and to cut a long, drawn out story short, we announced our closure with debts and a heavy heart in January 2012 having outlasted several other High Street players.
What’s this tale of woe got to do with shoe fitting you may ask? Well, once I’d realised trading in our present format and location wasn’t an option I started thinking. One conclusion that hadn’t changed in over ten years was that footwear was the hub of our shop. But now there was another realisation. We had grown enough of a reputation in our field that we could (probably) exist selling outdoor footwear alone and in an out of town location. The phrase, “build it and they will come” kept echoing around my head and I spent weeks looking for a suitable low rent property we could start the process from. After weeks of fruitless searching in the vicinity of Oldham, Ashton and Stalybridge, I suddenly changed tack completely and found a small but appealing mill building in my home village of Marsden. The lease was signed in an instant and then the hard light of day showed itself. The building was knackered! Still, I have some very loyal and enterprising friends and with their help and lots of midnight oil burned, we rebuilt our new acquisition. The joy of this was that I could design pretty much the ideal internal layout conducive to our purposes.
We opened on deadline at the start of February 2012 with the paint still drying and engrained on my fingers and for one unworthy moment I thought, “will anyone actually come?” But they did, and they’ve kept coming for nearly three years in ever increasing numbers to experience an offering of expertise I honestly believe is unique in our field.
Last year, I realised a long standing ambition by opening a foot health clinic staffed by a qualified podiatrist within the shop. We had always referred customers where necessary to a couple of local podiatry clinics – now we can keep those referrals in-house when an issue requiring more skilled intervention is required.
Other outdoor shops have been canny enough to develop an improved service in this area and there are more trained footwear staff than ever thanks to associations like the Society of Shoe Fitters and retailer courses provided by manufacturers. Some of the more prestigious emporiums have “guest podiatrists” but these are often just half a day’s pop up presences and not a substitute for an in house foot health clinic such as we now have.
Our mission is to lessen the guess work involved in much outdoor footwear purchasing and to measure and assess each and every customer of ours to obtain not only the appropriate genre of footwear but also of course the correct fit. Our mantra is to listen to the customers needs and observe carefully the many variables they present with both physically and mentally. To that end, we don’t dictate when a fitting rule is contravened at a customers request – just guide and advise. We might for instance fit and lace the footwear of a young, technical mountaineer requiring performance very differently to that of an elderly dog walker striving for pure comfort!
I also insist that customers are all treated fairly and with the courtesy I myself would like to find if I were shopping. Most small shops like ours face supply and stocking issues, often due to cash flow. It’s very tempting to try to offload what you’ve got on the premises even if it’s not necessarily the right thing. Sure, you’ll make a sale and put some cash in the till. But get found out and you quite rightly won’t see those folk again. If your reputation is such that your customer trusts you implicitly, he or she will wait for the right product to be ordered – particularly when you impress upon them they’re not beholden to buy if the fit’s not right. We have many manufacturer accounts and our customer order database typically has between 20 and 30 orders in progress. Sometimes we make no money at all on an esoteric order but the goodwill generated from that one transaction is more than the big supermarket players will ever enjoy!
As we’ve acquired experience, we’ve also got to know our products better and better. There’s very little guesswork when bringing out footwear for a customer to try, so usually they walk away with the first or second pair they are shown. At the end of the day that saves time for us and confusion for them – it just needs confidence on our staff’s part. Most customers are also happy for us to narrow the choice right down – even with over eighty different footwear models in stock, only a handful will fit correctly and be suitable for a particular use. We supply a huge range of different orthotics and footbeds but only suggest their inclusion in footwear if appropriate – I personally think the current trend for supplying a supportive foot bed as an add on sale is slightly worrying!
Our core customers now tend to be the more mature folk. They’re the ones starting to experience foot health woes and they need and appreciate expert attention. Of course, if we could attract the younger and more active outdoor enthusiasts, we could help prevent some of the problems our older customers present with!
We charge normal manufacturers RRP’s and at our previous shop, customers would grumble and agitate for discounts. That rarely happens these days as we are confident in the massive added value we give with our biomechanical appraisals and the solutions we offer.
We’ve found the main trick is to work to but not above the limits of our expertise, to carry on taking advice from other professionals and to use common sense and observation when providing fitting solutions. Above all, we listen to our customers…
Three years on from opening Mountainfeet in Marsden, we are just about to renew our lease again and through the numerous customer recommendations we receive, business is still growing. The formula I’ve used to get here has been mainly one of hard graft and adaptation to the market and it will work for other small footwear shops provided they have the passion we have. We’re never likely to be rich but to still be trading successfully as a small independent in this day and age and have immense job satisfaction is reward enough for me…
