Happy Soles is an independent shoe shop that specialises in measuring and fitting children’s footwear.

At the core of the business is a passion for providing a service that supports the foot health and development of its young customers. This begins by working with brands that are renowned for their expertise in designing and manufacturing childrens’ footwear; added to this, the small team of staff is highly experienced in fitting footwear that allows for growth without compromising a stable fit.

All fitters at Happy Soles are parents themselves so they understand young people and appreciate the challenges of parenthood. Ultimately, the priority is always to get the best fit above making a sale.

We need our feet to carry us through our daily activities and it’s estimated that we will cover 150,000 to 200,000 miles in a lifetime so looking after our feet in childhood provides the foundation for healthy feet in adulthood.

Regular checks on footwear are especially important in childhood as younger children are unlikely to tell us when they have outgrown their shoes and the bones in their feet don’t fully harden until well into the teenage years, meaning that ill-fitting shoes can cause lasting damage.

We’re right in the middle of back-to-school season here at Happy Soles which means that you’ll find us a little less tidy than we’d like at the moment as we have to make room for the many brands and styles of school shoes that we stock.

We stock seven different brands in total which give us tens of different styles to make sure we have something for everyone. Each of our brands is chosen for its quality and expertise in children’s footwear design and manufacture as we only want to sell shoes that fit well, look good and last. This means that we have many core styles that are repeated year-on-year because of their popularity and reliability.

Our mission is to put your children in well-fitted shoes that last so the experience of our fitting team is an important aspect of what we do. As a small team of four we have almost forty years of fitting experience between us and the fact that each of us is also a parent (and some of us grandparents) means that we understand how a visit to the shoe shop can be a happy experience for some children but also a very difficult experience for others. We do our very best to take the stress out of it for you and, as this is our peak season, we do recommend that customers book in advance to avoid a potentially lengthy wait to be seen.

PS Sandals, shoes, boots, trainers and first-walkers that are not black also available