The highly skilled labor of artisans migrating from Mexico and Latin America are the backbone of high-end design and retail in Los Angeles, producing exquisite furniture, textiles, and design goods. But they represent a creative force that seems invisible to the city. Artbound uncovers their stories and their role in making Los Angeles and Southern California the creative capital of the world in a new documentary Artesanos/Artisans, debuting May 17 at 9 p.m. on KCET. Check for rebroadcasts here.
While shoemaker and designer Raul Ojeda has managed to carve out a thriving career running two successful businesses in Los Angeles before the age of 35, he's the first to admit that his ascent is not exactly a dream realized. For me, it wasn't where I conceptualized it and then searched for it, he says. I landed onto shoe making by coincidence, just by continuing to evolve in the type of work that I was doing.
But now that he's taken over the historic Willie's Shoe Service and launched his own bespoke footwear line Don Ville, Ojeda can stand back and survey the impressive arc of his own career, especially since it's gaining steam now more than ever.
Helming Willie's has meant taking over one of the great, historic businesses of Hollywood: a storefront that's been in business for over 50 years, meticulously repairing shoes and hand-crafting specialty designs for TV and film, dating back to the golden age of Hollywood. And then there's Ojeda's own brainchild, Don Ville, which has nabbed plenty of attention on its own for being one of the premiere destinations for artisan shoes designed and perfectly fitted for your foot and your foot alone.
A decade ago, he was just a kid from Mexico in his early 20s looking for work in the endless sprawl of Los Angeles. A friend from El Salvador who'd done particularly well as a shoe shiner pushed Ojeda to try out that line of work and see where it landed him. Ojeda was reticent at first, but decided to set up shop at the Century City mall adjacent to numerous office towers teeming with professional types. It was a wise move and one that instantly garnered him a steady flow of work, so much so that he was quickly scrambling to keep up with demand. It's one of those things that if it gets too busy, people are not coming anymore because you have to wait for an hour to get your shoe shined, he said. Who's got an hour and a half to wait for shoe shine?
Shoemaker and designer Raul Ojeda. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
--
--
Raul brought on a handful of employees and expanded to several shoeshine stations scattered around the west side, turning customers around within 10 minutes and garnering a devout clientele as he went. And over time, his customers began encouraging him to expand from just shining shoes to also repairing them, planting the seeds for a career to come. The thing is that a lot of my business ideology really comes from talking to people and listening to advice, he said. A lot of my clients are businessmen and entrepreneurs -- big, successful people -- that just talk to me about opportunities and say, Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?
Little did Ojeda know that the full crystallization of his career would come purely by chance. A woman he was dating at the time happened to live in Hollywood and when he would drive across town to visit her, he would pass a curious shoe repair shop called Willie's. When he finally stopped to peek in, he was bowled over by what he saw. I fell in love with the way Willie's looked, he said. [It] looked completely different than every other shoe repair shop because it wasn't some franchise. It was just old wood panels and actual sewing machines -- tabletop sewing machines -- that you don't really see in shoe repair stores. I was so curious and I just started to come in slowly and build a friendship with Willie, who by the way said that he didn't want anymore work. Too busy.' Because I liked him and was interested in getting to know him, I just started coming in every week.
Willie was well into his 80s at the time and not particularly interested in apprenticing any heady young startups. But Ojeda happened to notice the shop was suffering from a pretty tragic lack of organization that he could easily start to chip away at. He began coming in regularly on his own without pay, tidying up, and, most importantly, learning how to make shoes from one of the last great masters.
That's how I saw an opportunity of me making myself useful, he said. I was brought up by makers and merchants. Back home in Mexico City, right now, my dad has a carnitas stand and he's got his own pigs growing in the back. He's got a batch of 10 or 15 and he works the whole week grooming his pigs. And then on the weekend, he's gonna kill one and he's by himself. That's how you earn your living and that's the mode that you're in 24/7. Its not like you can clock out at any point. Your pig gets sick in the middle of the night and is making noise? You gotta get up and see what's going on. You dont wait until eight in the morning when it's your time to go to work. So, I just started to come into the shoe shop regularly to just pick up things and work regularly.
Photo: Courtesy of Raul Ojeda.
And that's not to say things went swimmingly once young Ojeda began inserting himself in the day-to-day of the business. He pushed for shoes to be repaired within one week, compared to the unchecked window of time that Willie and his employees had grown accustomed to. The shop rarely issued tags to their customers or took down phone numbers to reach them. In fact, when Ojeda finally cleared out the back of the shop some years ago, he found over 500 pairs of unclaimed shoes, covered in dust and filth.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
04/12/2025
Coronal mass ejections caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun can have fa...
04/12/2025
Gracenote Content Connect enables media ecosystem to precisely align ad campaigns and programming based on rich content signals
NEW YORK - December 4, 2025 - N...
The highly skilled labor of artisans migrating from Mexico and Latin America are the backbone of high-end design and retail in Los Angeles, producing exquisite furniture, textiles, and design goods. But they represent a creative force that seems invisible to the city. Artbound uncovers their stories and their role in making Los Angeles and Southern California the creative capital of the world in a new documentary Artesanos/Artisans, debuting May 17 at 9 p.m. on KCET. Check for rebroadcasts here. 
