Business Profile: The Rugged Boot & Shoe Company
The Rugged Boot & Shoe Companyin MoheganLake is not your typical shoe store, according to its owners.
You do not even have to enter the store to see that it is different. The building housing the store was a schoolhouse decades earlier and the owners had constructed an addition that resembles a train caboose.
Owners Rob Reinstein and his wife Barrie, who reside in Cortlandt, offer only footwear and related products, unlike a department store.
The store was started 42 years ago by Reinstein’s father-in-law Herb Hirshan. The store has been operated out of its current East Main Street location since 1977. “Route 6 has a very high traffic flow,” Hirshan said. “He was looking for a place to buy,” Reinstein added.
The previous tenant of the building used it for a junk business, Reinstein said. Decades before that it was utilized as a two-room school, which opened in 1911, he said, adding that the original floor and school bell are still in the building.
The caboose was added in the late 1970s and was originally created to sell children’s clothing, with much of the items resembling what a railroad worker would wear, Reinstein explained.
The business was originally a clothing store and a separate facility that offered boots in its previous location behind the current location. “We used to have next door, there’s another business there now, we used to have boots and we used to call it the Rugged Boot. That’s where we had all our work boots. And in the late ‘80s we combined everything into one building so we called it the Rugged Boot & Clothing Company. And the when we went to all shoes in the mid-90’s we changed it to the Rugged Boot,” Reinstein said.
The store offers work boots, hiking boots, sneakers, walking shoes, casual shoes, dress shoes, sandals and clogs, as well as socks and accessories. “We sell the best shoes in the world,” Hirshan said.
While the store tries to sell as many American made footwear as possible, about 70 percent of the store’s footwear are imported from China and Europe. “We specialize in widths and comfort,” Reinstein said. “We specialize in very big sizes.
Reinstein said he and his wife sought a rugged New England-Adirondack Mountains look for the store, which features wood chairs. “Most shoe stores have the same look every time you walk in,” he said. The owners wanted their store to be “more exciting.”
Service and offering “high quality product” are the keys to the store’s decades long success, Reinstein said.
The Rugged Boot & Shoe Company is located at 3256 E. Main St. in Mohegan Lake. For more information call 914-528-1900 or visit theruggedboot.com.
