Bryr Studio, located in the American Industrial Center, is a combination shoe shop and studio that handmakes and sells custom women’s clogs. Shoes are created to order by founder Isobel Schofield and her small team of designers. Schofield launched the shop two years ago, and opened the studio a year later.
Shoes are designed and manufactured in the back of the studio; in the front, customers can peruse 25 different styles and try them on before making a purchase. According to Schofield, Bryr Studio offers 15 different leather colors and two heel heights, providing customers with approximately 2,000 distinct shoe options, with prices that range from $240 to $270. The leather is sourced from American tanneries.
Most of the studio’s customers don’t live in Dogpatch, but come from elsewhere in San Francisco. “We have a lot of people coming down to come to the shop specifically,” Schofield said. Some people are drawn into Bryr Studio when it catches their attention as they walk by, she said, but most clients knew about the studio before visiting and are “destination shoppers.”
Schofield said she loves the neighborhood, and used to live down the road from her studio, when Dogpatch was “very quiet and very empty…Two years ago, when we moved in here, [the American Industrial Center] started converting the ground floor spaces on the Third Street side [from manufacturing] to retail, and I think that’s really affected the neighborhood, kind of opened it up and made it a little more friendly.”
