Footwear and leathergoods brands, keen to offer restoration services to their customers, have found a specialist partner they can rely on in The Restory.

Five years after launching its expert repair and aftercare service for high-end shoes and bags, 2021 was something of a breakthrough year for London-based The Restory. Two famous brands, Manolo Blahnik and Nicholas Kirkwood, announced The Restory as their specialist aftercare partner in 2021.

The message from these brands is clear: they want their products to remain in use for as long as possible. They want their customers to repair rather than replace accessories and footwear that show signs of having been loved and used, of having served the purpose they are designed to serve. They want wear, not waste; longevity, not levity. They could have tried to set up their own aftercare operations, but The Restory had already covered much of our ground and is happy to share the know-how it has built up.

Its customers use an online delivery form to arrange the collection of the items they want restoring. Once these arrive at The Restory’s workshop, a team of in-house artisans assesses each job and sends a formal quote for it. If the customer gives the go-ahead, work begins right away. Cleaning and standard repairs usually take two or three weeks; it can take longer to restore the colour of an item or repair or replace pieces of leather.

London and beyond

The service has expanded beyond London to the rest of the UK, where customers also have the option of dropping items off at a number of luxury retailers including Harvey Nichols, Selfridges and Harrods. Further expansion means customers in many parts of Europe, North America and the Middle East can now book a repair at The Restory; global courier services will collect items from homes or offices and ship them to London for repair and back again when the work is complete.

Chief executive of The Restory, Vanessa Jacobs, says her idea for the business sparked into life thanks to high-end footwear, although it germinated in her mind for around eight years while she pursued a consulting career at global services company Accenture.

After moving to London from New York, where she worked in the finance sector, an opportunity at Accenture came up and she picked out a pair of favourite shoes to wear with her power suit to the interview. She took the shoes to a local cobbler so that they would look their best on the big day and was dismayed by the poor quality of the service and, especially, by the fact that the people in the shoe repair shop hadn’t even polished them. This came as a shock because, she insists, no self-respecting shoe repair outfit in New York would dream of neglecting to clean a customer’s shoes before returning them. It had to be possible to improve what was on offer in London, she thought.

Gap in the market

In spite of this shoe set-back (she wore others on the day), the interview went well and eight successful years at Accenture followed. In the course of that time, Ms Jacobs built up extensive knowledge of the dry-cleaners and footwear artisans across London whom she felt she could trust with expensive shoes, luxury bags and delicate fabrics. Artisans with the required levels of expertise and attention to detail were around, even if they were often far away from Ms Jacobs’ home and kept (from the point of view of a busy business woman) inconvenient customer hours. Mulling this over during a period of maternity leave in 2015, she recalled her original idea. Her certainty grew that there was a gap in the market for a London-based business that cared about helping consumers prolong the beauty and usefulness of high-end products and could provide New York levels of customer service. This led to the launch of The Restory with co-founder, Emily Rea, who is the company’s head of marketing.

Online luxury retail platform Farfetch was an early admirer, naming The Restory as one of 11 start-ups to feature in the inaugural edition of its ‘Dream Academy’ mentoring and funding programme in 2018. Farfetch still works with The Restory to offer repairs to its own customers and said that the aftercare service provider was one of the partners it relied on to make its business more circular.

Responsible approach

This was part of the appeal for Manolo Blahnik when it became The Restory’s first monobrand partner in September 2021. It told its customers that having access to the care and repair services Ms Rea and Ms Jacobs have established would help them “extend the longevity of [their] most beloved Manolos”. The footwear brand said it saw this programme for repairing shoes and extending their usefulness as part of wider efforts to take a responsible approach to business and support “a greener future”. And when customers buy new Manolos, they can now do so with the confidence that their investment will be longer-lasting than ever. When the time comes to reheel, apply protective soles, replace toe pieces, dye the shoes or carry out any other restoration work, the service required will be straightforward to arrange. The partnership with The Restory, which it has called ‘Mend My Manolos’, covers Manolo Blahnik handbags too.

Later in the autumn, Nicholas Kirkwood followed a similar path and announced that The Restory would also “power” its aftercare service. The Central St Martin’s and Cordwainers’ College-trained designer, who launched his eponymous brand in 2005, says the partnership will help “give new life to our shoes” and will be part of the company’s commitment to sustainability. He says the Nicholas Kirkwood brand will continue to choose “best-quality, durable materials”, but The Restory’s skill in restoring leather surfaces and colour will help make its products even more durable.

Falling in love again

The Restory’s founders are positive about their new brand partners. And if other leathergoods and footwear brands feel any reluctance to place their aftercare offering in the hands of a partner, they point out that it is Manolo Blahnik, Nicholas Kirkwood and the other finished product manufacturers who will retain “the nice bit”. It is they who take worn and damaged items from the public and pass them right away to The Restory. It is their team that will then do “all the hard work” before sending the items back for the brands to present restored versions that will allow customers “to fall in love with them all over again”.

Longevity, not levity. Brands that care about the circular economy want their products to remain in use for as long as possible.
Credit: Manolo Blahnik/The Restory

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