Bronzed baby shoes coming back

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

During the Depression, former kindergarten teacher Violet Shinbach canvassed Ohio neighborhoods looking for yards with wading pools, tricycles and toys strewn about. She knew the young mothers who lived in those houses were prospective customers for her fledgling entrepreneurial enterprise: bronzing baby shoes.

Despite the hard times, the business took off and endured. By the early 1970s, the Bron-Shoe Co. in Columbus was bronzing 2,000 shoes a day and sending them all over the country.

Eventually the company struggled with ways to market the specialized service. Like many quaint traditions of earlier generations, preserving that first pair of tiny shoes in copper alloy as a forever keepsake fell out of favor.

But also as popular commodities sometimes do, bronzed baby shoes are making a comeback among a new generation of parents and grandparents, thanks in part to an aggressive social media marketing strategy.

“It’s a visibility thing, and our visibility just went away,” says CEO Robert Kaynes Jr., the 58-year-old grandson of the company’s founder. “We pretty much lost a generation. I don’t think it’s because it went out of style. I think it’s because it went out of sight. Nobody knew we were there.”

Now known as the American Bronzing Co., it’s the oldest and largest of the few companies still providing a service that many assumed had gone the way of record players and black-and-white TVs.

Just about anything solid can be bronzed. The company has plated baby pacifiers, track cleats, golf balls, dog collars, ballet slippers, cowboy boots, military drill-instructor hats, football helmets, even a pile of elephant dung for a man who wanted a souvenir of an African safari.

But baby shoes of all modern-day styles remain the company’s bread and butter: tiny colorful Nike sneakers, oxfords, sandals, Mary Janes, christening slippers, moccasins and Crocs. Thirty employees ship about 100 bronzed shoes a day. Prices start at $79.95 per pair.

After relying on door-to-door sales then retail stores and direct mail, the company’s business bottomed out by the late 1990s. Kaynes said online marketing has helped bring it back, especially being able to place ads prominently on the Facebook pages of moms with toddlers and other aggressive strategies to keep the ads visible. Shipments have surged 25 percent in the past six months.