Bruce Miller has outlasted everyone in his profession – quite literally. His Thomastown business, Shoe Last Australia, is the only remaining last (the moulds on which shoes are constructed) manufacturer in the country.
The Mill Park resident has seen major changes to the industry he entered as a 15 year-old, living on a dairy farm with future ambitions of becoming a farmer. “There was no work at home for me, but I wasn’t able to move away and got told I had to get a job of some description,” he says. “An opportunity came up in a last factory – and I didn’t even know what a last was! My main thoughts were to keep my mother and father happy, do some sort of trade and then go farming.”
After more then 50 years in the industry, Miller has created lasts for the rich and famous, including Greg Norman, Gough and Margaret Whitlam (who wore a size-13 shoe) and Malcolm Fraser during his time as prime minister. He continues to work alongside local and international shoe designers, as well as the Sydney footwear company that made shoes for the musicals Wicked and Mary Poppins. More recently, he created about 30 pairs of lasts for the shoes made for the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (slated to open in December). “That was a bit of a challenge,” he says. “One of the new machines I put in enabled me to make them. I could never have turned them in the old machines.”
New technology has provided Mr Miller with these opportunities and obviously been the catalyst for major change. “There were three factories in the early ’70s, collectively making 3500 pairs of lasts a week in those days. We wouldn’t make more than 50 pairs a week now and the other factories have disappeared.’’
Mr Miller has travelled extensively researching and buying new technologies (Germany and Japan this year alone), which doesn’t come cheap. “I spend a lot of money bringing the business up to 2012 state-of-the-art equipment,’’ he says. ‘‘It cost $100,000 for a single machine that does one thing, but for the industry to keep going with some sort of thread, it’s needed.”
Mr Miller bought Shoe Last Australia five years ago, as it was also on the verge of closing. “Instead of retiring, I tell people I bought myself a hobby,” he laughs. “Even though I take no money out of the business, I just enjoy what I’m doing.’’
He describes himself as the conduit for most people in the Australian and New Zealand footwear industries. “I’m very much a people person and always have been,” he says. “I put a lot of people in touch with other people and don’t mind doing that. I have the passion and I don’t want to take my knowledge to the grave.”
