Car­ol Quash

Nathan Dur­gans­ingh was just 17 years old when he found a niche mar­ket with­in his cir­cle of friends; clean­ing their shoes for a small fee. At 24, he is the own­er of a small busi­ness that out­grew its space at his San­ta Cruz home and had to be re­lo­cat­ed to a larg­er space in St Au­gus­tine.

“Ba­si­cal­ly, I just used to be in­to sneak­ers a lot, and when­ev­er I would go out, af­ter­wards I would just clean my shoes and my friends’ shoes and charge them around $40. Even­tu­al­ly, it just turned in­to a busi­ness,” he told Busi­ness Guardian.

Dur­gans­ingh, a South East Port- of-Spain alum­nus, start­ed what was then a side hus­tle with $400 in­vest­ment, that he used to pur­chase a clean­ing kit on­line. He said ini­tial­ly his clien­tele was made up of just friends be­cause he had a full time job at a fac­to­ry and he was at­tend­ing class­es to get some ad­di­tion­al CSEC pass­es. He grad­u­al­ly be­gan at­tract­ing more cus­tomers and he es­ti­mates that The Shoe Laun­dry now has be­tween 30 and 40 cus­tomers a week, new and re­peat.

“I was able to leave my full time job and do this full time.”

Ba­sic clean­ing starts at $100, while deep clean­ing, and leather pol­ish­ing and con­di­tion­ing costs a bit more. There are al­so add-ons such as un­yel­low­ing, sole ic­ing, suede treat­ment, paint cor­rec­tion, fill­ing for crack­ing, re-dy­ing, and crease pro­tec­tors.

“Peo­ple ex­pect mir­a­cles some­times, but the gen­er­al sell­ing point of shoe clean­ing is the con­ve­nience be­cause peo­ple don’t like to clean their shoes or they don’t want to.

“We have our ba­sic clean­ing and we have deep clean­ing. Ba­sic tar­gets just the out­side and the laces, deep clean­ing is the en­tire shoe: the in­sides, out­sides and un­der­neath.”

Dur­gans­ingh iden­ti­fied post Car­ni­val as peak sea­son for The Shoe Laun­dry; that time of the year when footwear of all types has been worn to var­i­ous events, and has been mer­ci­less­ly tram­pled on while pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion and sup­port for the feet of spec­ta­tors and mas­quer­aders on the road on Mon­day and Tues­day.

“We take in a lot more work dur­ing that pe­ri­od be­cause we work with bands dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. Af­ter Car­ni­val there is a whole rush to get shoes cleaned.”

He said an­oth­er rea­son for the re­lo­ca­tion last Feb­ru­ary was to cre­ate bet­ter ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty for cus­tomers.

“I live in San­ta Cruz, so that is kind of out of the way. Peo­ple couldn’t al­ways come to me, so I used to have to go and col­lect shoes from all over the place.”

And from that as­pect of the busi­ness, Dur­gans­ingh saw an­oth­er area in­to which he was able to ex­pand, tar­get­ing the do-it-your­self mar­ket. He of­fers a range of clean­ing prod­ucts for peo­ple who pre­fer to clean their shoes them­selves. The prod­ucts are im­port­ed from Chi­na, and he pack­ages them in­to his own brand­ed kits.

“So we have an Es­sen­tial Clean­ing Kit, which in­cludes stan­dard clean­ing brush, a four-ounce deep clean­ing so­lu­tion and a mi­crofi­bre cloth. We have a Sole Sauce to treat yel­low­ing, and a sponge we call Show Eras­er.”

Dur­gans­ingh said the forex short­age has been as hard on his busi­ness as on so many oth­er busi­ness­es, and he wish­es his cred­it card of­fered a high­er US$ lim­it.

“But I find a way to work around it,” he said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, The Shoe Laun­dry al­so of­fers clean­ing ser­vices for bags and hats.

“We have the ma­chines to do it, so why not?”

Like most oth­er small busi­ness­es, ex­pan­sion is al­ways on the agen­da, and Dur­gans­ingh sees the open­ing of oth­er branch­es in the near fu­ture. As for his long-term goals, tak­ing The Shoe Laun­dry to an in­ter­na­tion­al space is def­i­nite­ly on the cards.