New Balance Birmingham

For Wesley McCluney, shoes are a family business.

His father opened a New Balance Store in Memphis in the late 1970s, and it not only provided for the family’s needs, it offered footwear to customers seeking made-in-the-U.S.A. shoes from a then up-and-coming company.

Now, New Balance is established, and so is McCluney.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in the late 1990s, McCluney took his father’s model, built it his way and spread it across the Southeast. He opened his first store in Nashville, followed it with five stores in Atlanta and most recently, in 2011, launched the New Balance Store on U.S. 280.

McCluney’s Birmingham store has been open for a year and a half and has already become his highest-volume store. He was living in Atlanta when it took off and initially thought he could run it from there. But after seeing its success, he chose to headquarter his entire operation around it.

He believes the store will continue to grow to one of the top-10 in the country, but business wasn’t the only reason he moved to Alabama.

“I always wanted to move back to a place that had that community feel,” McCluney said. “Atlanta was too big for my tastes. I wanted to raise my family in Birmingham, and it’s been wonderful so far.”

McCluney said his 280 store has grown so rapidly thanks to not only quality product and technique, but also its location and the shoppers it serves. One-third of New Balance’s shoes are made in America, and McCluney said the distinction is important to many of his customers.

But one thing three-fourths of his customers may not realize is that they’re wearing the wrong shoes. Not the wrong style, size or color – the wrong size. He said once customers receive a professional fitting, they often buy a bigger size than they’ve been accustomed to wearing their entire life.

“If I ask people to go home and find the most comfortable shoe they own, more than likely that shoe will also be the biggest shoe they own,” he said. “For almost every foot ailment from plantar fasciitis to bunions, properly fitted shoes are the recommended solution.”

At McCluney’s New Balance store, customers are fitted both using an digital machine and a Brannock Device – the archaic metal clamp that’s often seen peeking from beneath benches at shoe stores. Not only does this assist the customer in finding the right length, but also the proper width. McCluney’s New Balance Store carries sizes from a women’s 4 to a men’s 18, and most shoes in multiple widths.

“It’s a critical part of what we do,” McCluney said. “Offering shoes in widths helps us get it right. It may require carrying more inventory, which drives our costs up, but we’ve also found carrying more inventory will lead to more sales.

“It’s a circle, and a good one.”

McCluney said that over the past year and a half his staff has helped people suffering from diabetes, to whom proper fitting can be of critical importance, as well as athletes who often remove their socks to reveal black toenails.

“At the end of the day, we find runners to tennis players with this problem are all wearing their shoes too tight,” he said.

McCluney said through exceptional service, he hopes to make connections with customers. It’s those connections, he believes, that will help him most in the place where he’s chosen to raise his family – and his family business.