If the shoe fits

Bruce Miller has outlasted anybody in his profession - absolutely literally. His Thomastown business, Shoe Endure Australia, is the abandoned actual endure (the moulds on which shoes are constructed) architect in the country.

The Mill Park citizen has apparent above changes to the industry he entered as a 15 year-old, active on a dairy acreage with approaching ambitions of acceptable a farmer. “There was no plan at home for me, but I wasn’t able to move abroad and got told I had to get a job of some description,” he says. “An befalling came up in a endure branch - and I didn’t even apperceive what a endure was! My capital thoughts were to accumulate my mother and ancestor happy, do some array of barter and again go farming.”

After added again 50 years in the industry, Miller has created lasts for the affluent and famous, including Greg Norman, Gough and Margaret Whitlam (who wore a size-13 shoe) and Malcolm Fraser during his time as prime minister. He continues to plan alongside bounded and all-embracing shoe designers, as able-bodied as the Sydney cossack aggregation that fabricated shoes for the musicals Wicked and Mary Poppins. Added recently, he created about 30 pairs of lasts for the shoes fabricated for the cine The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (slated to accessible in December). “That was a bit of a challenge,” he says. “One of the new machines I put in enabled me to accomplish them. I could never accept angry them in the old machines.”

New technology has provided Mr Miller with these opportunities and acutely been the agitator for above change. “There were three factories in the aboriginal ’70s, collectively authoritative 3500 pairs of lasts a anniversary in those days. We wouldn’t accomplish added than 50 pairs a anniversary now and the added factories accept disappeared.’’

Mr Miller has travelled abundantly researching and affairs new technologies (Germany and Japan this year alone), which doesn’t appear cheap. “I absorb a lot of money bringing the business up to 2012 advanced equipment,’’ he says. ‘‘It amount $100,000 for a individual apparatus that does one thing, but for the industry to accumulate traveling with some array of thread, it’s needed.”

Mr Miller bought Shoe Endure Australia 5 years ago, as it was aswell on the border of closing. “Instead of retiring, I acquaint humans I bought myself a hobby,” he laughs. “Even admitting I yield no money out of the business, I just adore what I’m doing.’’

He describes himself as the aqueduct for a lot of humans in the Australian and New Zealand cossack industries. “I’m actual abundant a humans being and consistently accept been,” he says. “I put a lot of humans in blow with added humans and don’t apperception accomplishing that. I accept the affection and I don’t wish to yield my ability to the grave.”