Tailors, cobblers busy restoring old clothes, shoes

ISTANBUL

More and more people are visiting tailors, cobblers and upholsterers to have their clothes, shoes and furniture restored rather than buying new ones as prices of those products are rising fast.

Not only tailors or cobblers but also small businesses that repair electronic goods are very busy these days, as consumers struggle to cope with rampant inflation.

Businesses of tailors, telephone repair shops and furniture upholsterers at least doubled this year compared to the last year, overwhelmed by repair requests from consumers, said the people from those industries.

Clothing and shoe prices declined by 0.3 percent in November compared with October, but the annual increase in the cost of those items reached nearly 41 percent, the latest inflation data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) showed this week.

Last year, a shoemaker would repair five pairs of shoes a day, but now it’s at least 20, said Mehmet Kahraman, the president of an association representing shoemakers.

“I have loads of shoes at my shop that need to be repaired. I am super busy,” said Burhan Özdilek, who has been running his businesses for 40 years in Istanbul’s Zeytinburnu district.

His workload has exploded in recent months, Özdilek said. “My customers are not only people living in Zeytinburnu, but I also have customers coming from other parts of Istanbul just to have their shoes restored. I just cannot keep up with the increasing demand.”

Kahraman noted that the shoes people bring to cobblers for repair are mostly “fake” products, including sneakers and women's boots made of leatherette.

Repairing such counterfeit or poor-quality shoes is impossible, Özdilek said.

The situation is the same with tailors, who are nowadays busy not only with altering trousers’ legs but also making new clothes.

“We are back to the 70s,” said Turan Aydoğdu, the president of the Istanbul Tailors’ Association.

More and more people are visiting tailor shops to order clothes instead of buying one from fashion stores, according to Aydoğdu.

Businesses of tailors have increased 150 percent over the past year, he said.

People mostly order items whose prices are skyrocketing, such as coats, according to Aydoğdu.

Coat prices in Istanbul soared 36.4 percent month-on-month in November, the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce reported last week.

The cost of having a cloth sewed at a tailor is half the price of the same item sold at stores, Aydoğdu said.