The reason that people go for shoe repair is because it's cheaper to do than buying a new pair again as most good brands are quite good at building their shoe to the point that they encourage recrafting of their shoe due to their quality build. I believe i remember that edetal offers recrafting services for their own brand at $150 and $180 for other brands.
I have only started wearing good quality (entirely subjective) GY welt dress shoes recently in the last couple of years and topy all my shoes. Rotation works out to about 1 wear a week. I personally find the argument of "good shoes better mileage" self-fulfilling in the sense that if you rotate (the main reason for better mileage IMHO) and follow a shoe care regime (shoe trees, wipedowns after each wear, regular conditioning and polishing), any shoes will naturally give you better mileage.
FWIW, previous dress shoes I wore did not see any rotation (i.e. worn about 5 times a week, consecutive days), but I made it a point to re-topy before the wooded heel gets exposed, which is roughly about 6 months, and kiwi the uppers every 3, 4 months (but no conditioning).
Those shoes lasted me about 3 years before the uppers or more often, the inner arch area of the sole gave way. And during the entire period, there was no need to re-topy the forefoot area (before the shoes died of other reasons).
Would anyone care to share with reasonable rotation (worn at least 3-6x a month?) + shoe care, what is the longest one has managed to keep your dress shoes in wearable condition with only re-topy (either heel, forefoot or both) and not re-soling? And what brand shoes are those?
Just to add for perspective, since the post is already so lengthy, while I work an office-based job, I do not drive and therefore do quite a fair bit of walking in my dress shoes.
-ed at this?