We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tony Wyatt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tony below.

Hi Tony, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Our industry lost over half of the number of shops in North America in past 15 years. We used social media to market beyond our local customer base and reach out to people in areas that no longer have a shop near them. We created a large following and now service shoes and boots from all over the country and even some international customers as well.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

In 1989 our founder Ricky Wyatt purchased our first store from his employer. He quickly added his brother Tony and father John as his partners and named the company Wyatt and Dad. From there we built a chain of 7 shops in the 1990’s. We sold all but our original store so that our father could retire in 2002. In 2016 Tony’s son Lance and an employee Tobias approached the brothers about expanding again. We opened a store in Durham for Tobias and purchased a store in Charlotte for Lance. When Covid shut everything down, Tony and Tobias created a YouTube channel and started offering mail in services. Using social media and YouTube, we expanded our mail in services to a point that we closed the Durham store to focus on our mail in customers. Our Winston Salem store and Charlotte store still offers traditional shoe repair services, while our mail in service offers customization of high end footwear.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

The beginning of us using social media started before we started our YouTube channel. With Yelp and Google available for consumers to find your business, we noticed that the majority of small businesses don’t capitalize on them. We built our Yelp and Google pages by filling out the pertinent information like most businesses do, but then we began to take pictures, on them, of the products that we wanted to grow the sales in. By doing this we changed the expectations of our clientele. Instead of coming to us for simple repairs, customers started coming in asking for the customized services that we posted pictures of. This increased our specialty jobs, so we started Facebook and Instagram pages to showcase them as well. When covid shut us down we decided to take it to the next level and started the YouTube channel.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

During the process of growing our business to multiple locations, we did both processes of opening from scratch and purchasing existing shops. Purchasing an existing business is more expensive up front, but it is easier to maintain the current sales and then expand from there. The payment seems to be a burden after the excitement of getting going is over, but it is already calculated into the business expenses, so you have to keep focused on that.
Opening from scratch is attractive because it doesn’t come with the high cost of purchasing. However, everyone should know that no start up goes like the business plan lays it out. It can start out bigger than expected and there are problems associated with too much of a good thing. Or, it can start out a lot slower than expected. Either way, there are a lot of stressful times and even financial problems that goes along with a startup. Be prepared for those times until everything levels out. Either way you choose to go takes money. It is just a matter of which way fits your personality and budget

Contact Info:

• Website: https://WyattandDad.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/procobblers?igsh=MTRtbDg5cTkzcWt3cQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EUK1iqg2U/?mibextid=wwXIfr
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@wyattdadcobblercompany?si=qqK634vrw87rNT0L