Jim McFarland / America's Cobblerdiscussed

Caroline's pick and the consensus favorite — Eddie: 'the runaway in this session.' It started with Phil's wedding shoes: a nameless West Village hole-in-the-wall saved them, and Caroline realized the whole trade is anonymous mom-and-pops — you go to 'your local cobbler,' there's no brand. Jim McFarland is the exception: 1.5M on TikTok, nearly a million on Instagram, restoration/transformation content with strong engagement, and a real operating business — McFarland Shoe Repair in Florida, where people ship shoes from all over the world, plus the 'America's Cobbler' line of DIY shoe-care products (cleaning, conditioning, waterproofing — Uggs, designer soles). Caroline's frame: fragmented like piano technicians and ripe for a nationally recognized go-to name — scale the team, footprint, or hub-and-spoke mail-in. Megan loved it: with local cobblers 'you're heckling over price, you have zero idea what the quality is gonna be, you basically have to pay up front in cash' — a true craft/trades business where a trusted brand is really interesting. Eddie is an avid cobbler-goer (a boots guy spending $150 twice a year on resoles). Caroline's adjacent angle: a pipeline with TheRealReal/Fashionphile — buy discounted distressed designer shoes, refurb through him; Megan went further: he could list refurbished inventory himself, the best 'as-new' source. Caroline sent cold outbound (his LinkedIn is faceless and inactive — 'only the Dr. Sethi types are active on LinkedIn'); Megan has mutuals to activate if he doesn't answer.