For more than half a century, Art Fine’s footwear and clothing businesses have been a staple of downtown State College. Now he’s getting ready to close up shop for the last time.
Fine will close his last remaining store, Barefoot and Metro, on May 31. The shoe and women’s clothing shop at 130 E. College Ave. is running a progressive markdown sale that is currently at 40% off all merchandise — including brands like Ugg, Birkenstock, Steve Madden, Hunter, Blundstone and Dolce Vita — with discounts increasing as the closing nears. Fine also plans to eventually sell all furniture and fixtures.
Turning 77 this year, Fine said he’s occasionally thought about retirement, and not wanting to sign a multi-year lease this spring, he decided now was the time. The closure will end a retail run that started with an Earth Shoes store, evolved into Barefoot and grew to include Metro, AJ Fine’s Sample Sale and People’s Nation.
“I’ve had a lot of fun in my in my career,” Fine told StateCollege.com during a nearly two-hour conversation at the store in early March. “We had our ups and we had our downs, but it’s been a great run.”
Much has changed since Fine opened his first State College shoe store in 1975, and his shops have done about as well as any small brick-and-mortar retailers to adapt to the times.
A Penn State graduate with a degree in art, Fine began working for his father’s successful Philadelphia area bridal gown store business out of college. He already wanted to strike out on his own when a friend introduced him to Earth Shoes, a hippie-ish shoe with a “negative heel” design that was supposed to promote better posture and comfort.
He didn’t get the appeal — “They are the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen,” he recalls telling his friend — but learned they had become so popular that franchisees couldn’t keep them on the shelves.
Fine pitched Earth Shoes on a State College franchise, and he said he secured a location from local real estate magnate Sidney Friedman for $400 a month in a converted garage on Calder Way (where Tasty K now resides).
Earth Shoes’ popularity flamed out within two years, and in 1977 the company filed for bankruptcy. Fine, though, continued on, selling the likes of Pony sneakers (at the time endorsed by multiple prominent athletes), Birkenstock and some of the first Timberland-branded boots.
It was in 1978, however, that Fine’s fortunes truly changed. That June a customer introduced him to her sister and his soon-to-be-wife, Nancy.
They married in December of that year, and by then she was already working alongside Fine. With an eye for fashion and the ability to charm vendors who Fine says were otherwise uninterested in dealing with him, Nancy expanded what their business could be.
“She made my business,” Fine said. “I am not kidding you. I wouldn’t have gotten half the lines I got if it wasn’t for her… She’s fashionable. She knows what’s going on.”
In 1982, Barefoot moved to Calder Square on East Calder Way, and a few years later they opened young women’s clothing store Metro on the 300 block of East College Avenue.
AJ Fine’s Sample Sale opened on South Atherton Street in 1996. The store was Nancy’s idea to provide a place were older-than-college-aged women could shop for fashionable clothes, shoes and accessories.
“Not only is she great at picking fashion, but she is incredible with customers,” Fine said. “Customers loved her. They didn’t love me; I wasn’t a lovable guy, but they loved her.”
Fine also added People’s Nation at 126 E. College Ave., where Douglas Albert Art Gallery is now located, in 2007. Under Fine’s ownership, People’s Nation was first a T-shirt shop that offered custom T-shirt printing, and he said the sometimes risqué shirts he posed on mannequins offended a few bluenoses.
Fine says that at the behest of his then-landlord, he converted People’s Nation into a women’s clothing boutique like Metro in the mid 2010s.
“That was OK, but it was never as fun as it was when it was the T-shirt store. The T-shirt store was the best,” he said.
Barefoot, meanwhile, moved to 130 E. College Ave. in 2002 after 20 years Calder Square. Moving to College Avenue had a big impact, he said.
“The demographics of my business changed dramatically,” Fine said. “I went from townspeople with students to students — all students. Even though I carried the same inventory in the beginning, the adults that I knew, I would see and say, ‘I haven’t seen you in a while.’ They’d say ‘Oh, that’s a beautiful store, Art, but it’s for the kids.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not for the kids. It’s the same inventory that you’ve bought, but if you’re going to say it’s for the kids, it’s going to be for the kids.’ And I changed my inventory to be geared towards students, and it was great. My business in the first year doubled from where it was back there, and it continued to do well.”
In 2020, Fine decided to close Metro because of escalating costs — a decision made before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and merged the Metro and Barefoot brands in one store.
COVID had a more direct effect on AJ Fine’s Sample Sale, which closed at the end of the year. Fine then decided to let go of People’s Nation as well.
Barefoot and Metro has endured even as retail businesses have faced increasing pressures from online shopping, which heightened during COVID.
“We never recovered fully from COVID because it taught people how you don’t need to go into a store, how you can buy everything and anything in the world, and it will be at your doorstep the next day,” he said.
Where once his main competitors were neighboring shops, now he competes with the websites of the same brands he sells. Potential customers often use the store for “showrooming,” or trying on a product and then buying it online.
“They have such an advantage over me because they have every style that’s made in every color that’s made in every size that’s made,” Fine said. “No independent retailer could do that. You couldn’t afford to carry everything.
“But still, I love my business. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
Now nearing retirement, Fine said he and Nancy plan to travel, visiting friends around the country and spending more time seeing their grandchildren in New York City, where both of their sons live with their families.
When he finally steps away from the last of the retail businesses that have been part of his life for 51 years, he says he’ll miss the work and the young people that kept it so lively.
“People ask me what I love the most about it. I love these 18-to-22 year old kids that have worked for me, for all these years,” Fine said. “There are some that just stand out in my mind. They’re just such terrific, terrific kids that are straight-A, 4.0 students. They work a 30-hour work week for me. They care. I know in life they’re going to go on to do really great things. And I’ve had enough of them in my 50 years that some come back to see me with their babies, and this is a generational thing. I’ve been doing this so long that I am older than their grandparents. That’s the most rewarding thing,
“That’s what keeps me feeling young is being in touch with young people. That’s what I love the most about my business. And they teach me what the trends are, what I should be selling, clothing-wise and shoe-wise. That’s what I am going to miss the most, to be honest with you, and I am going to miss this place.”
