People Are Fixing Things Again, and It's Weirder Than You'd Think

My cousin Marco owns a shoe repair shop in a strip mall next to a dry cleaner that's been there since 1987. For ten years, he watched foot traffic die. People came in, looked at prices, and walked to the mall to buy new sneakers instead. He stopped scheduling appointments on Wednesdays because nobody showed up.

Last year, something flipped. He's now booked three weeks out and turned away work yesterday. Not because I wrote about him in a column (he doesn't read columns—he reads receipts). Because his customers got tired of replacement culture and did the math.

A pair of good leather boots costs $200 to $300. Resoling them costs $60 to $90 and adds five years to their life. The math works. The environmental argument works too, sure, but what actually moves people is opening their credit card statement and realizing they've spent $400 on disposable sneakers in one year.

Repair technicians across multiple industries report backlogs now. Appliance repair shops can barely staff themselves. Bike mechanics work weekends. A tailor my mother uses went from three-day turnaround to four-week waits. These aren't artisanal luxury services anymore—they're ordinary labor experiencing ordinary demand surge.

Here's what interests me: this reversal didn't happen because corporations suddenly embraced sustainability or because some influencer made repair cool. It happened because companies made products worse. They glued batteries inside devices instead of making them replaceable. They programmed updates that slowed phones down. They designed refrigerators with circuit boards that cost more to replace than the entire appliance sells for. People got angry and started keeping things.

Manufacturers panicked. Some now sell replacement parts. Some make design choices that allow repairs. John Deere—a company that literally fought farmers' right to fix tractors—finally licensed repair manuals last year after sustained legal pressure. They didn't become good citizens. Their customers made the alternative too painful.

The weird part: the repair economy is creating actual jobs. Decent-paying jobs. A skilled appliance technician in most markets makes $55,000 to $75,000 with benefits. These aren't gig positions. There's job security because the work doesn't automate easily and demand keeps climbing.

If you've got a broken thing sitting in a closet, get it fixed. Not for the planet. For your wallet. For Marco and the thousand Marcos out there who learned a trade and got abandoned by the disposability engine. Turns out spite and economics make a decent team.