By Alex Crowe
The thing about big feet is that they run in the family, a fact not lost on customers responding to the closure of one of Chapel Street’s oldest businesses.
“My mother started going to this store in the 1940s, and I have been going for over 40 years,” Liz Dods said.
David and Stuart Rosenberg are saying goodbye to the family business after more than 120 years.Credit: Penny Stephens
“I don’t know what my size-13 feet are going to do now.”
After more than 120 years, Rosenberg Shoes in Windsor will close its doors for the last time in July.
The business is no longer viable for the family who started it.
Four generations have sold big shoes to owners of above-average-sized feet since the store was established in 1903.
Starting with David, the shop passed to Marcus, another David and then Stuart Rosenberg – its current owner, who has made the tough decision to move on.
This week, original David’s customers’ kids recalled tears of joy when they’d first found fashionable shoes that fit.
“I first discovered you while I was in Melbourne for work. We were on a bus, my friends spotted your shop, and we all got off and raced back,” Deb McDonald wrote on social media.
“I’m so grateful for you recognising that women with large feet are not unusual or freaks.”
Melissa Hicks-Lorenz said she had shopped at the family-run business as a grade-6 kid. She said she had now started taking her niece, “who also stands at a proud 6′1 and has a size-13 shoe”.
Chapel Street in Windsor during the first half of the 1950s.Credit: State Library of Victoria
“Thank you for allowing me to feel normal … being able to walk into a store and have the same experience as every other female to try on shoes,” Hicks-Lorenz said.
With its round, ornate-glass window shopfront, the business has become an outlier along the strip. Bars and restaurants have replaced the “butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker” as the stores changed hands.
“They were all there, but they’ve all gone,” David number two said on Thursday.
“When I started, there were four shoe shops in between High Street and the Dandenong Road area. Of course, they’ve all been long gone.”
Now retired, David, 78, took over the shop when his dad became ill, abandoning plans to study law at 18.
He said the shop counted basketball and football players, even former prime ministers’ wives, among its customers.
“Margaret Whitlam – being a large girl – she used to come down. Tamie Fraser and Tamie Fraser’s mother used to come down,” David said.
“We had both sides. We were politically neutral.”
Business bustled during his reign, and David took advantage of a favourable market. He worked closely with Melbourne hospitals to create orthopaedic shoes, and was ahead of his time providing online shopping.
When Queen Elizabeth II visited Melbourne in 1954, she sent her chauffeur to Rosenberg Shoes to pick up a pair of “Made In Great Britain” Distinctive Slippers as it was the only store that carried the English brand.
David said he teared up reading customers’ responses to the store’s closure on Facebook this week.
He said tears of happiness from young women finding something they loved to wear to their balls or work had been common at the store.
“It really is gratifying to get a smile on their face when you show them a smart pair of shoes, and you can convince them that they don’t have to wear flats,” he said.
“It is a very, very sad day that things have gone this way. I thought it might go a few more generations.”
Rosenberg Shoe’s in Chapel St, Windsor will close its doors in July.Credit: Penny Stephens
David’s son Stuart said it hadn’t been declining foot traffic that ended the long run. Stuart said tall people had sought the store out and travelled interstate for shoes in plus sizes.
Rosenberg’s strong online presence had kept it afloat through the pandemic, he said, but rising supply costs and slowed spending habits had hurt the store since.
Stuart said the biggest impact was a consequence of COVID-19, when brands the Rosenbergs had pushed to produce big sizes began selling the same shoes online.
He said it was worse that suppliers discounted their stock before it could be sold at Rosenberg’s.
Stuart, who is now contemplating his next career move, said some brands had indicated they might not sell big shoes forever.
“I do worry that this service that we provide will disappear again,” Stuart said.
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