Dominic's Shoe Repair Shines for 40-Plus Years

In some ways, walking into is like entering your corner tap room.

Want to talk about Philly sports, healthcare, history, politics? Longtime owner Dominic Mormando will happily oblige … and with much more insight than Coach at Cheers. The 70 year old seems perfectly content as he talks to a Patch reporter and two other men sitting on three chairs squeezed into his small shop.

”I'm vocal. Some people like that,” says the self-described “moderate to conservative Democrat” who posts cartoons in the store that reflect his political leanings.

The Levittown resident opened his business on Bristol Pike in Croydon in 1970 and has been based in Bensalem since 1975. His father, Dominic, also was a shoemaker, with a shop in Burlington, NJ.

“I learned how to do this as a kid,” says the cobbler.

That's a lot of experience but Dominic's technical expertise wasn't always in shoe-making.

“I was an aircraft electrician,” explains the former Navy petty officer, who put in two years of active duty in the 1960s and 11 in the reserves.

“I was looking for work in the aviation industry when I got out.”

That quest led him to Grumman Aircraft in New York for a few years followed by a job at the Mercer Airport. Then he became a diesel electrician for the Penn Central Railroad.

After a while at that job, a shoe supplier asked Dominic if he wanted to return to the family business of shoe repair.

“I had no money and I was raising children, so I had the opportunity to open my own business,” says Dominic, who moved to the Bensalem Center on Street Road in 1985 after about a decade across the street.

The rest, as they say, is history and a long one to boot. And much has changed during that history.

“There are a lot of nonrepairable shoes now but you always need someone to do a script (orthopedic prescription) and you still have to be able to do repairs,” he says. “It's a different clientele too. There's not as much men's sole work.”

Despite the changes and current economy, Dominic says business – which also includes key cutting – is good.

“I've always had work,” he says as the foot traffic continued Friday afternoon.

His strangest request came from a circus worker.

“I had to make clown shoes. It took two sheets of leather.”

The father of six doesn't like the term “dying art.” Rather, he just says shoe repair stores are “scarce.” His only township competition comes from on Route 13 in Andalusia, and he says Bensalem can certainly sustain two shoe repair men.

While Street Road's busy-ness doesn't hurt business, Dominic's Shoe Repair doesn't benefit much because it is tucked away in a corner of the shopping center.

“You can't see me from Street Road,” he says. “The only way I'm known is from the computer or by word of mouth.”

But that works for Dominic, who has no imminent plan to retire.

“You provide good service and good work and that's what brings people back,” he says.