A number of years ago, a rep pulled Com-Fit Shoes owner Fred Satin aside to give him a dire warning. You guys are a dying breed, he told the founder of the Scarsdale, NY–based sit-and-fit retailer. If you don’t change the fashions in here, you won’t last. “He was a very good sales rep for one of my biggest vendors,” Satin recalls, so he gave the man’s advice some consideration.
Fortunately, in the end he decided to ignore it. And today, the independent retailer is still going strong as it gears up for its 40th birthday in 2026. “I realized you can’t be everything to everybody,” Satin explains. “Staying true to who we are and what we do well—comfort with a little style—has been our biggest reason for longevity.”
Fans praise Com-Fit Shoes in online reviews as the “real deal,” a local “gem,” and one of “the last of the mom and pop quality shoe stores.” Though it’s been through several locations and a name change over the years, Satin’s store is beloved by a loyal customer base for its extensive selection of sizes and widths from more than 50 brands—and for its knowledgeable, service-focused staff.
“Fred and his team care incredibly much for their consumer. That’s what makes Com-Fit Shoes unique and successful,” says John Conlon, who runs the East Coast region for Phoenix Footwear and has worked with Satin for a decade. “It’s very rare to get the full-service treatment that comes with proper shoe fitting and a professional environment like the one they provide.”
“The secret sauce is treating every customer as if they were your mother or father,” explains Fred’s son, Jason Satin, the store’s manager. “We treat every person who walks in the door with kindness and respect.”
Expertise is another point of difference at Com-Fit Shoes. “They completely understand the needs of the customer,” says Bill Bracken, sales rep for Rieker Footwear’s Mid-Atlantic region and a 10-year vendor partner of the store. “Problem feet are not a problem for them. They identify the issues a customer has and find the correct product and proper footwear for them. They’re problem solvers.”
Staying Customer-Centric
Com-Fit Shoes’ core customer is “mature,” according to Satin, and female (75-80 percent of the shoes the store sells are women’s). She’s not a senior citizen, but she might have foot problems or wide feet. She’s also a fan of buying local and supporting independent retailers, he says. (It’s worth noting that she may have more means to do so than shoppers in some other enclaves: Scarsdale is recognized as one of the wealthiest suburbs in America by Kiplinger and Bloomberg.) She’s looking for comfort without sacrificing fashion. To meet her needs, the store carries everything from sandals to ballet flats, clogs to dressy evening shoes. Nowadays, though, there’s no question about what’s selling best.
“Our athletic business has taken over. Everybody’s making athleisure looks, and that’s what customers want—to be comfortable without looking like they’re wearing an orthopedic shoe,” says Satin. “Most of my customers aren’t running a marathon, but they would rather have a sneaker than a walking shoe even though they’re using it for walking.” As a result, top sellers include New Balance, Brooks, and Vionic. Among shoppers who don’t want a sneaker look, products from Ara and Clarks are popular.
That’s a far cry from the era when the comfort category go-to was P.W. Minor. “Those shoes served their purpose back in the day, but they weren’t eye-pleasing,” says Satin. “If we hadn’t gone to a more athletic look, we wouldn’t be in business. You’ve got to see where your customers are going and be fluid enough to react” to keep pace with their evolving tastes.
Of course comfort styles aren’t the only changes Satin has seen during his long tenure in the shoe industry. He cut his teeth in footwear retail at Macy’s, then worked for his cousin’s shoe stores and later for a major chain before going into business for himself, opening County Shoes in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers, NY, in 1986. “There were 20 shoe stores in that mall when we were there,” he recalls. “And there used to be two or three stores in every town.” In his early days as an independent, Satin stocked children’s footwear, but he narrowed his focus to adult styles in 2000, which has made the business steadier and less seasonal.
The mall location was a perpetual challenge, with property owners continually upping the rent. Finally, Satin moved to nearby White Plains in 2008 and renamed his business Com-Fit Shoes. Unfortunately, the new location was short-lived. In the summer of 2010, a fire broke out at the Indian restaurant next to Satin’s store, destroying the entire block and devastating six businesses, including his. Undaunted, he moved to his current location on Central Park Avenue in Scarsdale that fall.
“It’s been an interesting journey,” says Satin. He credits his store’s success to his repeat customers and to his staff, who play a pivotal role in building the loyal clientele that returns to Com-Fit Shoes season after season.
“My staff is everything,” says Satin. “One gentleman who works for me had his own 10-store chain. Another woman managed a store in the area for 27 years. Our youngest employee worked at my first location in the mall, then came back to work for me. You can’t get that level of experience anymore. I trust them implicitly. There are times when customers don’t know that I’m the owner of the store, but I’m good with that. I don’t need titles. I need everybody doing business, and I need the store to do well. That’s the bottom line.”
Team Effort
Satin trusts his crew’s knowledge so much that buying is a collaborative effort. “I try not to buy at the shows. I go just to look around,” he says. “I have [vendors] come in and show us everything. Then I get feedback from my staff. When the salespeople are behind the shoe, it’s going to sell. Besides, they’re the ones talking to every customer who walks in, so they know what people need and want.”
The store has built so much trust over the years that customers have followed it from location to location. Area podiatrists, too, have enough confidence to recommend Com-Fit Shoes to their patients for footwear and orthotics.
In addition to referrals and repeat visitors, old-school sit-and-fit service wins the day, in Satin’s experience. “We like to create a family atmosphere. That’s something I learned from the get-go, and it’s as important now as ever,” he says. “We love talking to our customers. We genuinely love helping them. A lot of people respond to that.”
“We try to give customers a great experience that leaves a lasting impression so they’ll want to come back to the store again,” says Jason.
“I can’t tell you how many times a day someone comes into the store, we measure them and put shoes on them, and they say, You know, I haven’t had somebody put my shoes on since I was 10 years old,” Satin says. “That’s really the only thing we can do that Amazon and Zappos can’t—talk to people and fit them properly. It’s tough to get new customers and it’s not cheap, so we work hard to keep the ones we have.”
Vendor partners, by contrast, haven’t always been so loyal. Like his fellow independents, Satin has helped build brands only to be ghosted when the companies decided to focus on DTC sales and partnering with larger retailers. “That’s a sore subject,” he says. After getting the proverbial Dear John letter from a leading athletic company that Com-Fit Shoes had carried since its early days, “I called my representative, and he wouldn’t even talk to me,” Satin recalls. “Then I called the company. Nobody there would talk to me. I wrote them a couple of very hurt letters, but basically they just told us to go **** ourselves. It’s wrong, but we had to move on.”
Such breakups don’t always pan out for brands. “We’ve had incidences where companies decided to go DTC then realized they made a mistake and came back to us,” Satin says. In one case, a brand dropped the store’s account, so the sales team introduced shoppers to a similar brand with comparable features. “The [alternate] product was good, our customers trust our salespeople, and the strategy worked,” Satin reports. “Ironically, we ended up getting that brand back eventually.
“We try to work with companies that support us,” he explains. “They show us they want to be in an independent store by helping if there are fit or quality issues, not by opening a store to compete with us. Some of them offer extras like contests for the salespeople, which my staff enjoys.”
“Fred has tried every brand I represent,” says Phoenix Footwear’s Conlon, noting that Trotters has been particularly successful. “He shows his level of loyalty and partnership to both me and the consumer each and every season.”
Future Focus
Looking ahead, one of Satin’s top goals is beefing up the store’s website. Though Com-Fit Shoes made a conscious decision to stop selling online in the past, “we’re trying to build up our internet presence so we can get the word out about where we are and what we do.”
He also plans to reduce inventory. “We tend to have a lot of inventory because offering a huge selection of comfort shoes is an important part of our business, and we know that if we don’t have what the customer wants, they go online. There were times when I’d have 10 different items that looked the same just to give customers selection,” Satin explains. “But prices have made that tougher, so we’re really trying to limit duplications. You have to find a happy medium between inventory levels and paying your bills.”
Uncertainly over tariffs hasn’t made matters any easier. “Pretty much every vendor has raised prices 10 percent, and I’ve had some cancellations by companies saying they can’t afford to make the shoes they told us they would for fall,” says Satin. “I don’t think it’s hit consumers yet, but they’re going to be paying more for shoes. We’re not a low-end store, and at some point, customers are going to say, I’m not spending that much on a shoe or I can only buy one pair of shoes a year. Our business relies on multiple sales, so that worries me.”
But even today’s uncertain times pale in comparison to 2020, in his opinion. “Covid seemed like the end,” Satin recalls. “We closed for three months. It was very important to me that we keep all our people and pay them, so everybody had a three-month vacation. We used to take walks together. I found every trail in Westchester. My wife’s a teacher, so while she was at home teaching on her computer, I was walking around the woods with my staff. If I had lost them, I would have closed the store.”
“Coming back was challenging because people were still afraid to walk into stores,” Satin recalls. “But we survived. Five years later, there are still people who would rather shop in stores than push a button on their computer. There are people who would rather go to our store, get fitted, and try shoes on than order five pairs of shoes online and return four. I hope that continues to be the case.”
Going forward, “I see our store as a thriving hub, known not just for quality footwear but for the experience we offer,” says heir apparent Jason. “We’ll have expanded both in-store and online, continuing to build strong customer loyalty and a shop that people genuinely love and trust as a one-stop, go-to destination for comfort, fashion, and support.
“If I become even half the boss my dad is, that would be a win,” adds Jason. “His passion for this business is obvious to everyone who has worked with or for him. I love rainy and snowy days when it’s quiet enough that he shares classic stories of the past.”
In the mix is sure to be the tale of the salesman who told Satin he was a dinosaur for focusing on comfort styles for a more mature clientele. “The fact is, people are living longer and more of them need this type of footwear,” Satin says. “That’s not going to change, so I think there’s going to be a spot for our kind of store.” •
