Longtime shoe store owner will discuss 38 years of business on Main Street

LACONIA — Kevin Sullivan was hired at Melnick's shoe store in 1969 at the age of 14. He was brought on as a stock boy, as extra help to shuffle inventory while the store and the rest of downtown underwent the "urban renewal" of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a project that re-thought and rebuilt much of the city's business core.

Sullivan worked for Sam Melnick and his son Mike for seven years. In 1979, he bought the business and operated the store for nearly 30 years, selling the business to Bootlegger's in 2007. As part of the Laconia Historical and Museum Society's current "Merchandising Main Street" exhibit, Sullivan will discuss his experience as a Main Street vendor on June 20 at the Laconia Public Library. His talk is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

"When I bought it, it was what you might imagine as a good, old-fashioned shoe store," said Sullivan. "All we sold was shoes and hand bags." That all changed, though, as Sullivan's tenure saw the footwear market, both locally and globally, transition away from the "good, old-fashioned" way of selling and buying shoes.

"When I came in, I was one of the first Nike dealers in the area," Sullivan said.

His career as a shoe seller saw the advent of what he called the "sneaker revolution," when athletic shoes grabbed the attention of shoe buyers. Sullivan remembers the "revolution" started with "Jox" shoes made by Thom Mcan. Nike was next to catch fire, when Melnick's started carrying the brand, Sullivan said, the company only made a handful of shoes.

"Through every decade, they are always things that just exploded. I was real good at catching that wave," said Sullivan. By attending trade shows and carefully watching his inventory, Sullivan was successfully able to have the popular shoe of the moment in stock by the time the craze hit. "It was very fulfilling to jump on a product line and watch it explode. That was the fun of the business."

There was one relatively recent exception to Sullivan's prescience, though. He recalls first seeing Crocs at shoe shows and thinking, "Those are so ugly, I would never put them in my store." However, his friends in the industry kept talking about how well Crocs were selling, and so he stocked them and saw what he had been missing. "It was bizarre," he said.

Sullivan's eagerness to have a full inventory lead him into a bind one spring; he had ordered a truck full of sneakers in anticipation of warmer weather. The problem was, winter had decided to stay late that year and the snow banks were still waist-high when his bill was coming due. That was how he came to hold his first sneaker sale. "They came out of the woodwork," he said, and the next year he intentionally over-ordered so that he could have another sale.

"Once a quarter, I tried to have a gang-buster promotion," he said. The sneaker sale was joined by a buy one, get one half-off sale, a sidewalk sale and a boot sale. Sullivan recalled how parents would keep their children home from school for a morning of discount shoe shopping.

Sullivan's business landscape changed dramatically in 1993, when the Tilton outlet mall stores opened. "You had to think differently. All of a sudden, just down the road, you've got 12 new shoe stores. You've got to distinguish yourself from the outlet stores."

Melnick's increased its work boot section three-fold and stopped carrying ladies' dress shoes. He also "jumped on" New Balance shoes, which had a range of width sizes as well as lengths. "That's where my full-service gave me an advantage."

In February of 2007, Sullivan sold the store to Bootlegger's, an opportunity he couldn't turn down. "It was probably a little sooner than I wanted to sell it, but not by much," he said.

Sullivan now works as a commercial real estate agent.

From his viewpoint, Sullivan said those who foretell the death of downtown are mistaken. "Main Street is a very cyclical location," he said. The recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s "was tough times," he said, and many storefronts closed. "We went back to full occupancy in 1994."

"Right now, Main Street is coming back from the lowest point I can recall," Sullivan said, referring to the many "holes" or vacant storefronts until recently speckled downtown. However, signs of the up-swing are readily apparent, such as the antique center moving into the former Bloom's Variety space, something stirring with the near complete makeover of the Sundial Shop building and a committee looking into a revitalization of the Colonial Theater. "There's going to be action," he said, and like a shoe seller reviewing his inventory, added, "all of a sudden, we don't have many holes."

CAPTION for KEVIN SULLIVAN in AA:

Kevin Sullivan started working for Melnick's Shoe Store as a 14 year-old, then owned the shop on Main Street for nearly 30 years before selling to Bootlegger's. Sullivan will discuss the store's history at an event on June 20 at the Laconia Public Library. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho)