In 1972, Vic Paraninfo opened up his ‘footwear and leather goods repair’ shop at the corner of Yonge St and Wellington St in Aurora, Ontario. Vic’s Shoe Repair is a small shop in the downtown core of Aurora - don’t blink or you’ll miss it; the store and downtown Aurora. Vic’s is sandwiched between an advertising agency and an office for A-Channel news and compared to his flashy neighbours, Vic’s signage is a subdued yellow sign that simply reads ‘Vic’s Shoe Repair’. Vic’s stands out because of it’s simplicity.
Vic is a skilled shoe maker and leather worker, so, upon arriving in Canada it was only natural for Vic to continue doing what he knew how to do, so he opened up Vic’s Shoe Repair. After years of hard work and determination, Vic has managed to turn that trade into a career. A career that has helped Vic raise a family, support a community and create a legacy.
Right now you’re probably wondering what exactly a shoemaker in a small town has to do with PR. … Bear with me for a moment and I’ll try and explain it to you.
As good as Vic is at repairing shoes, he’s ten times better at repairing skates. So, during our week hiatus from classes, when I was visiting my parents in Aurora, I brought a pair of skates with me that I had broken while playing hockey. I was going to drop them off at Vic’s to see if he could work his magic on them.
I walked into Vic’s and handed over my skates to the man himself. He took my skates with his rough and weathered hands and told me he would be right back. As he disappeared into the back of his shop to take a look at the damage, I started to look around the shop. That’s when I noticed it.
One of the walls inside of Vic’s Shoe Repair was completely covered in newspaper clippings. The clippings, the entire wall full, were from the local paper the ‘Era Banner’ and every single article praised Vic in some way shape or form. The theme of all of the clippings was Vic giving back to his community. The clippings spanned 30 years from 1976 up to 2006.
Among the clippings were about a dozen or so covering Vic’s ‘Sharpen for Arthritis’ fundraiser. For two decades, starting in 1976, Vic would hold a skate sharpening marathon on a designated Saturday and donate all of the money he made that day to arthritis research. Another group of clippings showed Vic’s constant support of local police and fire departments, again with Vic holding shoe shining and repairing events that saw all proceeds going to those two institutions. The most impressive clipping I saw was from 1982. It showed Vic being driven around town by the mayor of Aurora, Vic was being honoured as Aurora’s citizen of the year at the annual Canada Day Parade.
Vic resurfaced a few minutes later to give me some bad news about my skates, they were unrepairable. After digesting the tragic news about my skates, Vic and I started talking and I pointed to the newspaper covered wall and told Vic he was a celebrity. This seemed to humble the usually soft spoken and extremely friendly Vic. He shrugged off my comment and then started talking to me about the virtues of creating relationships. Vic said that life was about creating relationships with people and being real in those relationships. Vic told me that as long as you’re sincere and genuine with people you will hold their respect and as long as you have peoples respect you’re on the right path.
What I realized then was that Vic Parninfo is everything that is right about PR. Vic’s entire life, and career, was based on creating relationships. A local vendor in a small market, Vic did what he knew how to do and he did it well. At the same time, he supported causes that he believed in and gave back to a community that in turn supported him as much as they could, all the while practicing perfect PR.
Over the past 30 years, Vic has been the one staple at the corner of Yonge and Wellington seeing many businesses come and go while holding down his own forte. He’s outlasted almost every other mom and pop shop, and even some bigger corporate stores as well, all because of the relationships he’s managed to build. He’s created a worth, for himself and his business, well beyond discount prices and blowout sales. Vic manages to offer that intangible aspect to business relationships that most consumers yearn for. And the funny thing is while some companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for those kinds of intangibles, at Vic’s Shoe Repair its just Vic being Vic.
So, whenever you hear reporters or lawyers or traditional marketing and advertising execs bash PR for whatever reason, just think of Vic and how PR in its simplest can also be its most effective.
