SHOE retailing has changed since Hymie ''HJ'' Wittner opened his first store in Footscray in 1912 spruiking work boots and school shoes.
These days, a customer can email a photo of a pair of new stilettos to her mum, 10 best friends and therapist, asking their opinions before she buys.
The Wittner 1932 mail order catalogue - Shoes for All the Family.
But technology can work in retailers' favour. Debra Wittner, HJ's granddaughter and now a company director, recently saw a blogger perusing newly arrived studded loafers in a store.
''She took a photo, which she posted on her blog and Instagram and within three minutes we had 271 inquiries about those shoes,'' Ms Wittner said.
The usually low-profile Wittner family - patriarch David, his wife Rosette and children Debra, Michael and Peter - will step out at Melbourne Spring Fashion Week to celebrate Wittner Shoes' centenary.
They will stage a spring/summer collection runway parade in the City Square at noon on September 4 and feature in an RMIT student runway at Melbourne Town Hall on September 6 at 6.30pm.
There will be historical displays at the Grand Hyatt from September 1 to 9, and at the Block Arcade from September 3 to 9, with giveaways, including 10 pairs of bespoke fine leather shoes with Swarovski crystals for auction by women's charities.
HJ Wittner's father, Arnold Vitner, a Romanian Jew, arrived in Melbourne in 1885. He sold goods from a horse and cart, often on time payment. In 1912, owed money by a client who died, he acquired the contents of a general store at 53 Leeds Street, Footscray. He sold all its goods except £100 of wrongly sized and out-of-style shoes, which he gave to 17-year-old HJ.
Arnold leased the shop for HJ and said, ''Now you're in the shoe business.''
In an unpublished family biography, HJ's son David writes that HJ was a ''born salesman'' who counselled staff never to ask a customer a question that could be answered with a ''no''.
HJ invented slogans such as Walk the Wittner Way and built a thriving mail order arm for country people, which helped Wittner survive the Depression. There have been other challenges. David Wittner, who started as a full-time Wittner salesman in 1950, says it's a ''personal regret'' he lost the battle with the federal government to retain tariff protection for shoe manufacturers.
In the late 1970s, Wittner bought from more than a dozen factories in Melbourne and Sydney. Now shoes are made in China, India and Brazil, although the family designs them.
Wittner now has 73 stores and 500 staff and is weathering the retail slump - on September 1 it opens its first Tasmanian store in Hobart.
Web sales are 5 per cent of revenue; this is expected to rise to 10 per cent by 2015.
Debra Wittner says social media is having a huge impact on the way people buy. Young women will browse blogs or ''pins'' to check out trends.
''They're relying more on the mass consensus or what the other girls are saying than the magazines.''
CAROLYN WEBB
cwebb@theage.com.au