With a palpable tone of regret in his voice, Boris Shalomov explains from his Larchmont, New York location that “Cobblers are basically extinct.” Shalomov authoritatively points out that, “It’s easier to buy a new pair of shoes than fix them.” This kind of planned obsolescence is all too familiar to most consumers, but it is tragic in the eyes of a cobbling family. Shalomov, the founder and CEO of Shoe & Co. and its online adjunct, Shoecall.com, is the son of a cobbler. “This goes back many, many generations in my family,” he asserts. As a young boy in 1992, he and his family immigrated to the United States from Russia. “Six months later,” Shalomov recalls, “my father opened a store on Livingston in Brooklyn and later one in Jamaica, Queens – which is still open today.” It was in the back of his father’s Queens shoe store that Shalomov, a pharmaceutical student-turned law student, got his foot in the door of the shoe industry. “My parents never really thought of me continuing the tradition. They thought I’d live the American Dream: Go to school; earn a diploma; become somebody,” says Shalomov. “But I didn’t see myself working for somebody else. Making somebody else wealthy didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I knew I had the potential to be something of my own.” Shalomov has realized his solo potential. Since its first steps in 2010, Shoe & Co. has experienced an astounding 353% growth spurt with US $ 6.4 million in online profits alone in 2015 to show for it. And with two new 4,000-5,000 square foot department stores opening in the Tri-State Area in late 2017, it is clear that Shalomov feels his potential has not been exhausted.
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JULY 2016 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS
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