A New Chapter at Colton Footwear: Embracing Change and Looking Ahead

It has certainly been a season of change here at Colton Footwear. We recently had to make the sad decision to close the doors of our Chesham branch and step back from selling our shoes online.

As we are sure you can appreciate, it is an incredibly tough climate out there for local, independent retailers. We face many daily challenges, not least the ever-growing online market and the convenience of direct-to-door delivery. Competing with that scale means we cannot always guarantee we will have the exact item in stock the moment you walk in.

To give you a little glimpse behind the scenes: just one style of a children's shoe that comes in four different width fittings means that to cover sizes 10 through 2.5, we have to stock 48 pairs of shoes just for that single style!

Support Local, Stay Local

While we might not have a warehouse-sized inventory, we always welcome the opportunity to order a specific shoe in for you. Choosing to let us source it for you—rather than turning to a giant online retailer—directly ensures that we can keep our doors open. It means we can continue providing our expert measuring and fitting services for your children, and keep supplying great adult shoes to our community for years to come.

Exciting Things on the Horizon

But enough of the doom and gloom! We have so much to be positive about right now, and we are thrilled to share some great news with you:

• Back to School is Approaching: Our absolute favorite—and busiest—time of the year is just around the corner. We are ready and raring to get your little ones perfectly fitted for the new term.

• A Brand New Till System: We are introducing an upgraded point-of-sale system in the shop. This is going to help us dive deeper into exactly what inventory we should be stocking, and it will bring some fantastic new benefits to the customers on our loyalty scheme.

• Our New Website is Live: I am so proud to launch this brand-new site. While it might not have all the e-commerce bells and whistles of the past, it is wonderful to be back online. It is now your central hub to contact us and, most importantly, book your kids' fitting appointments directly.

Thank you for your continued support, patience, and loyalty through these transitions. We are so grateful for our wonderful community.

Look forward to seeing you in-store very soon!

The Colton Footwear Team