heels 12-20: half sole 35-50: full resole 50-90
Advanced options
The decider is construction, not price: Goodyear-welted and stitched shoes are BUILT to be resoled (repeatedly: decades of life) and repairing them is always right: cemented (glued) fashion shoes and trainers mostly aren't worth more than a heel tip or regluing. The rough rule: repair when the quote is under ~40% of replacement AND the uppers are sound: the uppers are the shoe: soles are consumables.
What The Shoe Repair Calculator Works Out
- Verdict: the repair quote as a percentage of the replacement cost. Under 40% with sound uppers is a repair; 40% to 70% is marginal, where welted shoes or shoes you love still justify it; above 70% a new pair usually makes more sense. Heel tips run GBP 12 to GBP 20, half soles GBP 35 to GBP 50 and a full resole GBP 50 to GBP 90.
- Cost per year: the quote divided by the extra years the repair buys, against the new pair's price spread over its own life. A GBP 45 repair that buys two years is GBP 22.50 a year against GBP 60 a year for a GBP 120 pair lasting two.
- The construction rule: Goodyear-welted and stitched shoes are built to be resoled repeatedly, so repairing them is right at almost any ratio. Cemented fashion shoes are worth heel tips and regluing only, and trainers' foam midsoles die by compression that no workshop reverses. Soles are consumables; uppers are the shoe.
- Repair threshold (advanced): override the 40% rule. The marginal band stays 30 points wide above whatever you set.
- Life of a new pair (advanced): how long a new pair lasts before it needs the same repair. It drives the buying-new comparison; the basic mode assumes two years.
- Repairs the shoes can take (advanced): a welted shoe takes three or four resoles before the uppers give out, a cemented shoe perhaps one reglue. The lifetime cards multiply out repairing that many times against buying new pairs over the same span.
- Postage or collection (advanced): mail-in cobblers charge GBP 5 to GBP 15 for return postage, which is added to the quote before the ratio is worked out.
- Days worn and care costs (advanced): days a week the shoes are worn gives the cost per wear for each route, and yearly care (polish, cedar trees, preventive heel tips) is added to both sides. Heel tips caught early are the highest-return maintenance in the wardrobe: an exposed pin grinding the heel block turns a tenner job into a rebuild.
- Saved by repairing (advanced): the difference between the two lifetime totals, and which way it points. A GBP 300 welted pair resoled twice at GBP 60 outlives a decade of GBP 80 cemented pairs and costs less per year while looking better.