In basically all shoe factories I’ve visited there’s a couple of trolleys with ongoing resole jobs. Customers who have sent in their well-used Goodyear-welted shoes to be repaired and made nice again. The picture above is from John Lobb Paris where a shoe has been taken down to their literally innermost constituents, soon to be rebuilt.
The fact that the shoe at a factory resole basically always is disassembled until only uppers, insole and canvas rib remains (which is done primarily since it’s effective for the factory), has as I’ve written about in several contexts before both its pros and cons. Among the advantages is that large parts of the shoes will be in new condition, the downside is that it easily becomes new holes or the existing holes are chipped in the uppers when the welt seam is sewn with the machine again, which limits the number resoles that will be possible to make.
