To his surprise, people are captivated.
“If you had told me three years ago that shoe repair could have a scene, I would have laughed,” McFarland said from his store, McFarland’s Shoe Repair, while shining a pair of leather dress shoes from the years 1980. “I can’t believe all these people like this.”
Viewers are fascinated by McFarland’s painstaking DIY, which usually involves meticulously dissecting old shoes and reconstructing them until they look new. Although McFarland often uses a sander, he does most of the work by hand and with basic tools.
In a video viewed nearly 60 million times, McFarland revives and customizes a pair of limited-edition boots, painting the soles a deep indigo shade. The video shows each step of the painstaking process.
“Fascinating,” one follower wrote, “and strangely satisfying.”
“I could watch a shoemaker all day!” commented another. “It’s so relaxing for me.”
“It gave me goosebumps watching the whole process,” a third person added.
According to McFarland, becoming a shoemaker – one of the oldest professions in the world – is not easy.
“It takes three to five years to learn the trade,” said McFarland, who comes from a long line of shoemakers. He learned from his father, who learned from his father, who learned from his uncle. “It’s my family heritage, my story. We have been working on this for a long time.
McFarland’s great-uncle owned a shoe repair shop in Anderson, Indiana, in the early 1900s. McFarland’s grandfather was his apprentice, and by 1920 he owned his own store. McFarland’s father also learned the trade and started a chain of shoe repair shops in Lakeland, Florida, in 1967. McFarland’s Shoe Repair, which opened in 1981, is the only one remaining.
As a teenager, McFarland had no desire to become a shoemaker. But when he was 20, his father fell ill and McFarland dropped out of school to help run the family business. He finally took over.
“I had a feeling I was going to come back here anyway,” McFarland said. “I have no regrets. I really love being here.
The shoe repair industry has been in decline for decades, with only about 3,500 repair companies spread across the country. Between 2018 and 2023, the number of shoemaking businesses decreased by an average of 2.4% per year.
“The problem is no one learns the business,” said McFarland, who is training his nephew to one day take over his store.
Remaining shoemakers, like McFarland, are struggling to handle demand.
“It gets a little hectic trying to keep up,” said McFarland, whose daughter, Tori McFarland, 25, launched her social media presence just before the coronavirus pandemic, attracting even more business .
As McFarland’s videos began to take off, people across the country who had trouble finding local shoe repairers began asking him if he would accept mail-in shoe repairs. Although he never did it in the past, McFarland said, mail orders now make up about 50 percent of his business.
McFarland advocates buying high-quality shoes and repairing them if necessary, rather than buying cheap, trendy shoes that tend not to hold up well. He said he frequently repairs shoes that are more than 40 years old. When he’s done with them, “they’ll probably be good for another 30 to 50 years if you take care of them,” he said.
McFarland’s mentality aligns with the repair movement, which promotes the repair – rather than replacement – of tattered or broken objects. Unlike fast fashion, whose consequences are catastrophic for the environment, the mending movement seeks to reduce consumption and waste. The phenomenon has spread across social media with a community of passionate menders on TikTok and other platforms. “Visible repair” – when repairs are artful and deliberately visible – has become its own adjacent movement.
“With everything we have on this planet – stuff made from plastic and polyester and stuff that’s not going to biodegrade in the landfill – we need to keep it in rotation as long as possible,” Rebecca Harrison said , 32, founder of Old Flame Mending, a tailor in Avalon, Pennsylvania, that specializes in restoring old clothes.
Often, when customers bring her their textiles, Harrison says, they share the story behind them. There is usually some sentimental value.
“People become very attached to their clothes,” she said, adding that Old Flame Mending does everything, including total overhauls and simple tailoring. It offers visible repair services, which have become increasingly popular.
The visible repair movement is loosely based on sashiko, a traditional Japanese embroidery technique. Atsushi Futatsuya, 40, teaches online workshops on the art form with his mother, Keiko.
The method “originated when the Japanese did not have enough resources to replace the fabric,” Futatsuya explained. “The stitching was done to make the fabric stronger or warmer, so they wouldn’t need to be repaired as often.”
The result is a decorative patchwork of fabrics that is also functional.
“Sashiko is so much more than just sewing, design or patterns,” said Futatsuya, who lives in Lewisburg, Pa., and, like McFarland, shows off her work on social media. “Sashiko is a way for me to add a story with sewing.”
McFarland says the feeling behind their work is the same.
“Good material can always be revived,” McFarland said. “It can last a lifetime.”
