Shop Local: Mar-Lou Shoes

Bud Ungar opened Mar-Lou Shoes at the Old Arcade, Cleveland, in 1958, to serve a very special segment of women, including his favorite customer, wife Marcia Lou: Their feet were too large or too small or too wide or too narrow to find well-fitting high-quality  shoes in department stores.   

“Dad knew he was onto something good,” son Dan Ungar said, when customers came from western New York and Pennsylvania and outside Northeast Ohio. The store grew to four locations until, in 1996, they decided to merge the chain into one large store at Hilltop Plaza, 5142 Wilson Mills Road, Richmond Heights.

They took the opportunity to expand their reach. “We realized we had a good opportunity to do business with all women’s sizes,” Ungar said. Eight years later they added men’s hard-to-fit sizes, too.

“Now 70 percent of our business is in non-department store sizes and 30 percent in typical department store sizes.” But they never lost their focus. Mar-Lou, he said, has the largest selection in Ohio of hard-to-find sizes for men and women.

You’ll still sometimes find Bud Ungar on the sales floor, right along with Dan and their able staff, specialists at hard-to-fit sizes, and they’re all giving “what no discounter or online outfit can,” Dan Ungar said.

“Service from the heart.”