(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring Robert Kaynes, class of 1974, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on December 11, 2011)  

Keepsake-makers

Columbus business that has bronzed baby shoes for decades uses Internet ads to find a new generation of customers

Robert Kaynes Jr., owner of the Bron-Shoe Co., stands by some of the thousands of bronzed baby shoes that his company produces every year.

At the Bron-Shoe Co., history is measured in years and in millions of shoes preserved for posterity.

Since its founding in 1934, the East Side company has bronzed more than 13 million baby shoes.

It was busiest in the 1960s and ’70s, then gradually cut back when the rising cost of magazine advertising and changing consumer habits took a toll.

Robert Kaynes Jr., the owner and grandson of the founder, is hoping to introduce baby-shoe bronzing to the current generation of young parents.

“Sentiment doesn’t go out of style,” he said.

He’s also hoping to modernize the business, making use of online tools to market its services, even if the company’s physical environment still reflects the styles popular during its golden years.

The 44,000-square-foot factory, 1313 Alum Creek Dr., has much of the same furniture and decor from when it opened in the mid-1960s. Kaynes sits behind a desk with a flowing, kidney-bean-shape surface, an example of design from that era. His grandfather once used the same desk.

About 30 employees are split between two businesses, bronzing and silver refinishing, which have two separate brand names, American Bronzing Co. and ProShine, respectively.

The heart of the building is a big room filled with industrial-size plastic tubs where racks of shoes are dipped in clear liquid that seals and stiffens them. After they dry, the next stop is a dip in a copper-colored liquid.

After drying once again, the racks get placed in a pool of blue liquid. With the introduction of a mild electrical current, the shoe becomes like a magnet, attracting metal molecules within the liquid, encasing the shoe in metal.

Although the process is called “bronzing,” the metal encasing the shoes is actually copper. Anybody who expects to see molten metal is going to be disappointed. The liquids are close to room temperature.

“It’s very simple, and that’s the beauty of it as a process,” said Gerald Frankel, a materials-science engineering professor at Ohio State University.

The process, known as electroplating, is used for much more than the production of keepsakes. It is a part of the production of computer chips and circuit boards, used to make metal adhere to specific parts of other surfaces, Frankel said.

“The fundamentals of it are in chemistry. The application is in electrical engineering,” he said.