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Contributed by: YourHub.com on 3/13/2008

Editor's note: Visit our Faces of South Metro page, where YourHub.com staff and readers can introduce you to more people who make this part of the metro area what it is.

Shannon Tunstead's got sole.

In fact, to her corporate customers around the Denver Technological Center, this self-employed shoeshiner is nothing short of a perfect fit. Every week, Tunstead travels between various buildings, providing in-office shoeshines to anyone needing to freshen their footwear.

"It's interesting and it's fun," Tunstead said. "You can tell a lot about a person by which shoes they pick," Tunstead said. "You can tell their character, how much money they make, whether they're yuppies, and really how they think."

In each office, where the average eye might view aisles of cubicles as the epitome of progress and productivity, Tunstead sees only hundreds of workstations ... and each desk represents double the feet.

"I think I'm in this business because it keeps me grounded, it's humbling," Tunstead said. One of the most difficult parts of the job is overcoming the stereotype some people have that shoeshining isn't a dignified profession.

"I still get laughed at by somebody at least once a day," Tunstead said.

The reality of the job is that Tunstead meets a variety of people while averaging $40-50 per hour.

"People are putting a lot of money into their feet," Tunstead said.

According to Tunstead, her customers generally spend between $150 to $400 on their pumps and patent leather, so her six-dollar-per-pair maintenance service can be a worthwhile investment.

"A shoeshine can make your shoes look brand new," Tunstead said.

Tunstead designed a special cart that allows her sit comfortably and makes it easy to tote her supplies through the labyrinths of office terminals.

Each shoe is given an assortment of polishes and treatments. First, the shoe is washed with leather soap, then moisturized, waterproofed, the soles painted, and finally brushed and buffed. Working on hundreds of shoes every day is good exercise and keeps Tunstead in shape.

"I could beat my son in arm-wrestling until he was 16-years-old," Tunstead said, pushing up her sleeve to reveal a toned upper arm.

Tunstead hasn't always been in the business of waxing wingtips. As a former restaurant manager, two of Tunstead's regular customers bet whether Denver was too much of a "cow town" for shoeshining to catch on like it had in bigger cities.

The gamblers thought Tunstead was a shoo-in to take on the job. For two weeks Tunstead apprenticed at the old Stapleton International Airport with an 80-year-old barbershop employee who was a 40-year shoeshining veteran.

Tunstead then tackled the feat of marketing the business. Within a year, 1,000 companies in the metro-Denver area had signed up for the service. It took 20 employees to handle the workload of shining so many of the city's shoes.

Tunstead has since down-sized and now works independently around the DTC.
After 15 years of scrubbing shoes, Tunstead said she has become accustomed to the smell of polish, but there is one occupational hazard in her line of work...the occasional soggy, sweat-smelling loafer.

"You know you're in trouble when a guy takes his shoes off and he's not wearing any socks."

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Submitted By: Daniel Smith

posted on 3/13/2008 @ 3:02:51 PM

Rated Story

Great posting on an outstanding business woman.

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