“Shop ’til you drop” has become “stitch ’til you fix.”
Recession-reformed spendthrifts are flooding tailors, furniture fixers and electronics repairmen with their hole-in-sole shoes, ripped pants and broken iPods.
All over the city, Mr. Fixits are being inundated with requests to repair doohickeys that would have been tossed in the garbage a year ago.
“Because the economy is in bad shape, everyone needs to save money, so they bring in every appliance they think they can save,” said Santos Lopez, the repair manager at Gracious Home on Third Avenue at East 71st Street.
“In the past, customers didn’t care.”
Surrounded by shelves filled with busted irons, vacuums and lamps, Lopez said business is up 50 percent. In his 25 years in the Upper East Side store, he’s never seen such a frenzy for fixing.
“A lot of floor lamps cost $30 new and it’s $20 to fix it, so the customer saves around $10,” Lopez said.
One of his customers, Valerie Mashburn, turned up to have her broken blender fixed.
“In the past, I wouldn’t have put in this effort, but to replace it would be a lot,” she said.
Steven Lastihenos, the owner of Apollo Comfort and Shoe Repair in Bayside, Queens, is so busy, he is looking to hire a part-time helper.
“Its nice to be doing well in this economy,” he said.
Mikayel Aslanyan, operating manager of Furniture Services, which has workshops in Queens and Staten Island, said, “A lot of people are doing repairs instead of replacing their furniture.”
Many of the couches he’s fixed recently have seen better days.
“A secondhand store wouldn’t have furniture like that,” he said.