The quaint cobbled streets of Brussels are a tourist’s dream-and a shoe manufacturer’s nightmare. But they were to provide a firm enough foundation for MISTER MINIT when he took his first tentative steps in that city back in 1957.
At that time, D. Hillsdon Ryan was a marketing manager with a major international company in Brussels. His wife had found that the Brussels cobblestones were taking a heavy toll of the stiletto heels that were then fashionable, and Mr Ryan was intrigued to discover that it took an average of ten days to get them repaired by local cobblers.
For someone of his business training, the conclusion was obvious: there was a real need for heelrepair service that was rapid and efficient.
Most people would have contented themselves with having had the idea, and left it at that. Not Mr Ryan. On July 14th, 1957, he and his partner at that time, Mr Donald W. Phillips, opened Brussels’ first “heel bar”- then know as "Talon Minute" -in the Au Bon Marché store in rue Neuve.
Although the Heel Bar only repaired heels, it was such a curiosity in the store that hundreds of people at the time would crowd around to watch the action. Policemen had to clear people off the stairway above our shop, and Minit was nearly pushed out of the excellent location by desperate store management. The success of that first shop soon led to others being set up-in Antwerp, Ghent and Liege-with similar results.
The department stores themselves understandably cautious at first, were soon to recognize that the new service could be and additional attraction for both existing and new customers.
The success of the concept of an efficient, rapid shoe repair service led to other shops being opened so that, by 1960, there were 24 shops operating in Belgium.
From those early days, the business expanded rapidly, operating today in 1200 shops in over 16 countries in Europe. From his modest beginnings in the basement of Mr Ryan’s Brussels home in 1957, with a grand total of two employees (Mr Ryan and his wife) MISTER MINIT has certainly come a long way.
