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Vintage Toronto Ads: Family Craftsmanship for Urban Feet
Though one tends to think of Roots as primarily a clothing retailer these days, it was a trendy shoe that launched the chain 35 years ago this month.
After studying several retail business ideas, company founders Michael Budman and Don Green settled upon the growing craze in the early 1970s for the Earth Shoe, a Danish-designed piece of footwear whose heel was lower than its toe. After failing to secure the Canadian franchise for the Earth Shoe, the budding entrepreneurs designed their own version. After a meeting with Bata to produce the line flopped, Budman and Green contacted the next shoe manufacturer listed in the Toronto Yellow Pages. The Boa Shoe Company, operated by the Kowalewski family, agreed to produce 120 pairs of negative heel shoes.
The first store opened on August 15, 1973 at 1052 Yonge Street in the Crescent Road Apartments complex across from Rosedale subway station. The building, constructed in 1927, was designed by Charles Dolphin, whose other Toronto buildings included the Gray Coach Bus Terminal on Bay Street, the Canada Post Delivery Building (portions of which were integrated into the Air Canada Centre), and the Consumers’ Gas Showroom at 2532 Yonge Street (now a Puma store).
In Team Spirit: A Field Guide to Roots Culture, Geoff Pevere outlined how quickly the store took off:
On day one, the store moved seven pairs of the “Roots Shoe” at a hefty $35 a pair. Hardly through the roof. The next Saturday thirty pairs walked out the door, which meant the doors could remain open-for another week. The following Saturday, for reasons only slightly less fathomable than the Seventies themselves, the ethereal forces of fashion faddism converged above the little shoe store on Yonge Street, and they were smiling. There were lineups around the block. The shoes sold out, and there were waiting lists for customers at the end of the line.
By the time the negative heel fad burned out a few years later, the store had introduced other styles of footwear and made its first moves into clothing and leather goods lines.
The storefront that housed the first Roots location is currently occupied by Farrow & Ball.
Source: Toronto Life, January 1975
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