A Man’s Shoe Haven

I rather like shoes, which is a problem because buying shoes is usually the low point of any shopping trip, especially for men. I guess we buy fewer shoes and don’t spend as much money on them, and thus as inferior customers get massively inferior treatment in shoe shops.

Your average ‘Office’ will stash the men away into one corner to be buffeted left and right while we look at our meagre, drab footwear selection by staff members carrying myriad boxes back to the exquisitely more profitable and fairer sex. Worse still are shoe shops that coldly point gentlemen up a flight of hidden stairs to, what is at first sight an abandoned attic. The music – which provides a youthful, fresh and lively party atmosphere to the ladies section downstairs – imbues the men’s section with the ambience of a nightclub too early in the evening: the punters, semi-embarrassed at turning up to such a deserted establishment, awkwardly stake out their spot and trying not to make eye-contact.

So far thus had been my shoe shopping experience two weekends back, I was out looking for a pair of weather proof hi-top trainers for day to day casual wear in the lab and out to the pub and gigs. Budget: up to £80. Not a tough ask by any stretch of the imagination, but after several big-chain shoe stores I was so un-inspired that I was beginning to wonder if I even needed to replace my hole riddled, rapidly decaying Reeboks.

This was a sorry state of affairs, my last shoe shopping attempt had been with my girlfriend and I’d wound up in such a terrible mood we nearly broke up (happily to say we’re still together and, after a veritably geological time period, the woman in Schuh eventually brought out the correct size pair of vans that I now own); if I had another awful shoe shopping trip I may have had to give up entirely on shoes and fashion footwear out of rags.

Luckily I found Offspring on 60 Neal Street (although if it’s more convenient for you, they have one on Camden high street). I had never heard of it before but the window looked promising. In front of my weary eyes was shop full of nothing but beautiful trainers of all varieties.

I went in, it was full of people and the music was up, but somehow I wasn’t beaten back by the sensation of anarchic violence that had been present in every other busy shoe shop I’d been in that day. A staff member said “Hello,” with a merciful absence of that “Can I help you?” bullshit. I found a pair of trainers that I quite liked. They brought me a pair that fit. I liked them. They gave me a 10% student discount (non-NUS, massively, massively lacking from other retailers ) and… brace yourselves… a canvas bag to take them home in.

Like seriously you know how Office and Topman give you those paper bags that fall apart and kill your hands and generally make your life hell by the time you’ve gotten two tube trains home on a Saturday early evening. Not so with these guys, despite being cheaper than competitors they gave me a proper bag I can use again.

I know the quality of the bag is a weird point to get all excited about but I mean, trainers are all pretty much the same wherever you buy them from but I have so much time for seriously good customer service at no extra cost, and the proper bag is a tangible example of how these guys provided it.

Offspring made me realise I don’t hate shoe shopping – I just hate most shoe shops. All I ever wanted was a wide selection of trainers to choose from and to be treated like a human being while I made my choice. If, like me, you share these modest demands, I highly recommend you try these guys out.