Family Keeps Shoes Craft Shining

The Age

Monday November 10, 1997

PATRICK DONOVAN

Everything shines at McCloud Shoes' Queen Street store: the leather shoes, the polished timber, the leather couch and antique chairs, the ashtray stand and the shoehorns.

It is this attention to detail that has brought Melbourne's well-to-do gents back for the past 50 years to the shop, in the heart of the stockbroking, banking and law precincts, to buy hand-crafted shoes.

But shoe-making is a dying art in Australia. In 1973, there were about 400 shoe manufacturers throughout the country in working-class suburbs such as Collingwood and Fitzroy.

But the reduction in tariffs and the decline of skilled shoemakers has taken its toll. There are only 70 small shoe factories left, and McCloud is one of about 15 that still make shoes using hand lasting and decorative hand stitching.

For 20 years, the third-generation company imported high-quality calf leather from France and England and had it made up in local factories to the company's style, color and quality standards.

"By making our own shoes we ensure consistent quality and we can adapt to clients' changing needs," says McCloud's owner and managing director, Peter Parkinson.

So when one of these factories shut down a decade ago, Mr Parkinson bought it and went into manufacturing.

He says he is still in business, despite tariff policies that have done nothing to encourage manufacturers.

"For years manufacturers had to pay a 15 per cent tariff on imported quality leather to make their own shoes, while there was only a 5 per cent tariff on imported pre-made shoe components from low-cost countries," he says.

"Shoe manufacturers were discouraged from hiring machinists and clickers (cutters) to make shoes, and encouraged to become shoe assemblers because they could import the components very cheaply."

The tariff on quality leather was recently cut back to 5 per cent, but Mr Parkinson says the damage has been done.

But this has not deterred the company from making quality shoes as the craftsmen did 100 years ago. At the company's small Brunswick factory, Mr Parkinson's son, Bradley, and Joe Anfuso, who has 35 years' experience in the business, hand-craft about 35 pairs of Parigina shoes a week.

Mr Anfuso says he cannot understand why customers do not spend a little extra - Parigina shoes start around $250 a pair - on hand-made shoes that are better for them and last much longer.

"People forget that whatever you put on your feet goes through your whole body," he says.

Hand-made shoes are easier to repair, and with a new sole and polish, they can last another five years.

Mr Anfuso says the trade is dying because the children of the original shoemakers - second-generation migrants who came to Australia in the 1950s and 60s - have become better educated and moved into other areas.

Bradley Parkinson prefers to make the shoes than work in the shop selling them. "Sure you get a bit dirty, but it's like painting a picture," he says. "I probably spend too much time on them. I'm an eccentric in my own right."

Mr Parkinson believes the Government's lack of foresight on tariffs has contributed to unemployment, because the manufacturing sector employs many low-skilled and low-educated workers.

"The Government has failed to recognise this, and most of the major assistance goes to the big companies which buy more machines rather than take these people on."

And he says the proliferation of seconds shops and bus tours that drive customers around to shoe factories on Saturday mornings are encouraging customers to become focused on price instead of quality.

"We are building a culture of consumers who are asking how cheaply can I get this product, not what quality can I get for my investment," he says.

While McCloud has been supplying shoes to Melbourne's judges, lawyers and politicians for years, celebrities of another sort have been filling the boots of a craftsman on the other side of town.

Rocco Bufalo has been making colorful boots for Melbourne's musicians, actors and eclectics for 32 years from his Malvern store. After learning the profession from his uncles in southern Italy when he was 10, he became inspired to make colorful boots after he heard Elvis Presley's Blue Suede Shoes.

He has never advertised, and he relies on his regular customers when they are in town. Among them are Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie.

Mr Bufalo makes all his own boots using 100-year-old machinery. Boots are crammed into every space and some have been there for 25 years. But he can't imagine making them for many more years, and his 18-year-old son seems to have other interests.

"It's not just a job, it's my hobby," he says. "I could teach someone how to do it in a week, but they need to have a passion for it.

"But maybe my son will change his mind."