The History of Mastershoe-Myshu

The History of mastershoe-myshu

Mastershoe-myshu is a UK based footwear retailer and is a trading name of Giles Uk Ltd, which also trades under the names Mastershoe, Myshu, and Sportshoe.The business  is owned and run by two brothers. 


Mastershoe first began trading in 1982 in The City of Bath’s ‘Camden Town’ on Walcot Street in the former Red House Bakery,  where the shop was well known for it’s quirky layout and with all the right shoes on display and the left shoes being sent down the ‘chute’ for purchase.  This unique layout was only changed as recently as summer 2013 when the Bath Mastershoe store underwent a refit. Although the refit has now updated the Bath store, it still keeps it’s original charm and quirky nature, including a ‘Welly Room’ dedicated entirely to wellington boots.


At it’s height of High Street retailing Mastershoe and Sportshoe, as it was then known, had 8 stores across the South West with 4 of these in Bristol centre alone.  Nowadays due to the huge growth of online retailing Mastershoe concentrates on 3 retail shops in Trowbridge, Bath and Bristol.

The Trowbridge store is situated in the town centre of Wiltshire’s County Town at the main entrance to the Shires Shopping Centre. Formerly a court room, a dance hall, and café and more recently a Woolpack Inn,  this Grade 2 Listed historic building was built in 1854 and was intended to become a magistrates court.  Opening in 2002 Mastershoe makes full use of the space this building provides, and offers a wide variety of footwear from many global brands including Nike, Converse, Timberland, DC, Dr Martens and Merrell, to name just a few.



The Bristol Mastershoe store opened in 1992 and is situated about half way up the popular Park Street.  In 2011 the Sportshoe store, located on the opposite side of the street, merged with the large Mastershoe shop to give the full range of footwear under one roof trading as mastershoe-myshu.   Park Street features many niche shops and boutiques,  as well as the bigger names, and even a Banksy mural.  With it’s wide and varied ranges of footwear including El Natura Lista, Camper, Onitsuka Tiger, Vibram and Converse, Mastershoe fits in perfectly. 

In 2006 Mastershoe-myshu joined the online retailing world and opened the website mastershoe-sportshoe.co.uk

Based in Trowbridge the website strives to give customers far and wide great footwear brands at competitive prices, and prides itself on it’s fantastic customer service.  Initially, the Mastershoe website began life in the Trowbridge store, however by 2009 it had become so successful it moved out of the store and into warehouses close to the old Stone Mill Building, where it enjoyed a full site redevelopment,  and was rebranded as mastershoe-myshu.  It  has gone from strength to strength ever since.

Place footwear - whats it all about?

Hi everyone!  Hope your all well it’s been a busy old month at Mastershoe, HQ.  We’ve been getting ready for the new summer ranges and have had lots of photos to take, shoes to admire and an extra little bonus yesterday which made all of our hard work worthwhile.  Sadly, I can’t tell you about that yet but rest assured we’ll keep you all updated once the time is right.  In the meantime I thought I’d let you in on another nugget of good news which is the arrival of some highly anticipated Place sandals.

So who are Place?! That’s what I said anyway...  As a business the boffins behind the footwear at Place have been in the industry for the past 33 years.  Their parent company ‘Langer’ became the first custom made foot orthotic laboratory in Europe.   Fast forwarding to the present day, millions of custom insoles later and Langer are the World’s leading foot health care supplier to the medical market.  They cater for all types of individuals ranging from elite athletes to acute diabetics and even people like me who have different size and shaped legs and feet.

The company themselves put their success down to their unique BFT technology (a foot-bed design feature) which is present in every shoe and sandal. Sadly they only design female footwear as a general rule of thumb however for medical purposes they do offer a range of custom made Birkenstock’s with personalised footbeds.

From a healthcare perspective I can also personally vouch for the effectiveness of this technology.  As a former runner I had to have knee surgery at 18 and have only recently got back into this sport having finally found what appears to be a solution, insoles capable of supporting my body in a way that works for me.  These were prescribed for me medically and while each case would have to be judged by a trained professional it is reassuring to know first-hand that they’re obviously doing something right.

We have two styles of Places sandals at the moment, the Ibiza and the Capri.  So feel free to have a look and if you struggle with anything from your posture to pressure points in your feet or aching legs, maybe just book an appointment with your doctor as well.  My luck only recently changed after receiving some useful advice from a Physio who suggested I would need to be referred and regardless of the right or wrongs behind this it’s made a massive difference once I requested an appointment with a specialist!  Anyway thanks for reading and I hope you like the new shoes.