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1. Over his 25 year career as a cobbler, Roy Back, 70, is all about producing quality work. Shoe stretching spray isn’t cheap, says Back, but he would rather have to charge more than risk destroying a client’s footwear. He says “the cost is reflected in the quality,” and that many places might charge you less, but with less care and greater risks from trying to cut costs.
2. Roy Back, 70, displays a photograph of Jae Oh (at right holding child), the man who trained Back and his son in being cobblers. An immigrant from Korea, his family gathered $100,000 to help him live and start a business in the States, a somewhat common tradition of Korean families. “Any excess money goes back to their relatives until they’re paid off. I have a lot of respect for the Korean people,” Back says, explaining that they live as very poor people until all debts are repaid.
3. A cobber shop is filled with dyes, adhesives, polishes and other chemicals whose hazards are easily ignored. On July 26, 2010, Roy Back, 70, was hospitalized after his coworker, Helen, noticed he was looking very weak. This sudden decline in his health put him in the hospital for ten days with a failing liver. A normal platelet count in a healthy individual is between 150,000 - Back entered the hospital with a platelet count of 7. After emergency steroid treatment, Back survived but now lives with diabetes as a result of the steroids. Back says he is "working on two of six cylinders." After analyzing the chemicals in his shop, industrial strength superglue is thought to be the culprit; anytime Back got a cut, he quickly repaired the wound by applying super glue. Doing this for 25 years slowly poisoned him. He is now working part time with, who he now calls “Saint Helen”, as an assistant.
4. Roy Back, 70, owner of the Poulsbo Cobbler Shoppe, has run this business for the past 25 years. In his 40s, Back found himself out of work, too “well qualified” for most jobs. He had formerly worked as a telecommunications supervisor, installing phone lines in new construction, but after the move to digital technologies, the advances drove Back away. He had great difficulty finding a new job, passed by for younger workers who could accept less pay. “Age discrimination is alive and well,” Back says, and his gray hair turned away many employers. His son Mitch, at age twenty, began training as a cobbler from Jae Oh, a Korean immigrant. Six months later, Back joined him. They worked together for 17 years until his son grew too uneasy at the volatility of running a small business. Mitch took an apprenticeship at the ship yard as a pipefitter, a more stable but more dangerous job.
5. The Poulsbo Cobber Shoppe receives steady work, but Roy Back, 70, has observed a change in mindset over the years. He says that people, especially the younger generation, have a “throw-away mindset” in buying products, instead of investing in high quality goods that can be repaired instead of replaced.
6. After years of working for big businesses, Roy Back, 70, became a small business owner in his late 40s. “Working for other people is all about who you know – always trying to polish that apple.” For two years, Back ran a gourmet food business out of a converted Subaru. He received such overwhelming success that he couldn’t keep up with the orders and stress, and backed out. He has learned a lot from 25 years of operation. “You learn there’s always someone you can never satisfy,” Back says, “They have problems in their own life and a just miserable people, so they try to make things miserable for everybody else.” He says the most important thing is to keep a positive attitude, because “ultimately, the customer is your boss.”
