By Kathianne Boniello
In an age when speed and convenience in business often win out over quality service, Steve Lastihenos and his family have been fostering a thriving shoe-repair shop in Bayside for years with the old-fashioned notion of personalized customer care.
“I still think there are a lot of people out there who appreciate the neighborhood store, the neighborhood service,” Lastihenos said. “With shoes, people like some place small with a lot of service.”
Fortunately for Lastihenos Apollo Shoe and Repair Store, at 42-34 Bell Blvd., has done so well it has nearly doubled in size since his father James began the Bayside business 25 years ago.
The store was first opened as a shoe repair shop but has been selling men’s and women’s shoes for the last 15 years, said Lastihenos, who began working in the place with his father as a teenager.
James Lastihenos, who died several years ago, first got involved in the shoe repair business with his own father and the pair ran a store in Jamaica before James opened another shop in Fresh Meadows, Steven Lastihenos said.
His father decided to move to Bayside, Lastihenos said, when it was rumored that another Bell Boulevard shoe business was closing.
“Back in 1976 my father came to Bayside when Bayside Shoes was for sale,” Steven Lastihenos said. “My father found out about it from one of his suppliers and he wound up working in the store for about a week.”
Although the deal for James Lastihenos to take over the space of Bayside Shoe’s eventually fell through, Lastihenos said his father looked around Bell Boulevard and saw an opportunity.
“Someone told him about an empty store about four blocks away” from Bayside Shoes, Lastihenos said of his father. “He realized there was more than enough business for him to make a go at it.”
It was the right move for Lastihenos to make, and both he and Bayside Shoes, at the corner of Bell Boulevard and 40th Avenue, stayed in business for about 25 years before the owners of Bayside Shoes retired earlier this year.
Nowadays Apollo Shoe’s is bustling, having recently acquired the travel agency next door, which gave them the opportunity in July to open a new, green-awning-topped Children’s Shoe Store adjacent to the original shop.
“We will have more room to serve people better,” Lastihenos said of the addition. “It’s been getting a nice reaction — people seem to be really happy that we’ve expanded.”
But while the retail side of the business has been thriving, Lastihenos said he continues to maintain the shoe repair practice his family has been working in for years.
“In part it’s because it was my father’s business,” Steven Lastihenos said of his desire to stay in shoe repair. “It’s been in my family for three generations.”
Lastihenos started in the shoe business when he was 14, working for his dad. He said his experience from all those years put him in a position to “really service people well .”
At Apollo Shoes, not only has Lastihenos kept the tradition of “neighborhood service” alive, but he has played a role in the Bell Boulevard scene while doing it.
“I like to feel like I’m part of the community rather than just doing a job,” Lastihenos said.
— Intern Roland Sackey contributed to this story.
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
