Shoe Rants and Raves

So the topic of shoes is really close to my heart. My left foot is a half size shorter than my right foot, but its a half size wider. Both my feet are shaped like a ducks. I seriously have feet that are 5 E's wide...well the right ones 5 E's. I've had trouble finding shoes that fit my entire life. Of course its a blessing in someways, for one thing I think it started me down the road of thinking outside the box. I wondered why, if there were customers wanting to buy shoes in my size, why no one was making them. It's a failure on the part of business in America today, and of course the consumer always shares in the blame.

If Temperance Brenen were here she could determine my nationality by the freaky shape of my feet (which is Pictish, BTW). How? Well as it turns out there's less then ten basic shapes of foot. It makes sense, right, there's a "Roman" nose, why wouldn't there be a "Roman" foot. Well there is, so do shoe makers design a shoe for the Roman foot? Of course not! Because only a small percentage of us shoe buyers chooses a shoe for comfort and durability. The rest of you pick a shoe because Micheal Jordan said to.

Lets run some numbers on Nike. As of 2006 Nike could manufacture a pare of shoes for $7. They paid factory workers in Indonesia and Viet Nam $1.50 a day (cost of living there is $4.50 a day). The average factory worker is female age 17 to 35 and works around 500 hours of overtime each year. Nike paid Micheal Jordan more than they paid all of the workers at all 6 factories in Indonesia. And to top it all off, do you think you can walk into a store with feet the size of Mr. Jordan's and buy a pare of shoes that fit? Nope! They only really sell a small range of sizes. In other industries this is called false advertizing, but...

At the extreme far end of the spectrum is the San Antonio Shoe Company. SAS designs, manufactures and sell entirely in the US. You can't even buy their shoes online because they think you should actually get your feet measured before buying a shoe. I own a pare and they are expensive, BUT, they look as good as new and they are 3 full years old. I think I can probably get 5 years out of them which means they are actually cheaper per year than Air Jordan's, which only last about a year.

Ultimately the problem is far greater than sweat shops and consumerism. In a life time we'll walk the equivalent of circling the globe 3 times. Each step can take our back out of line, cause knee and hip joint wear, or worse it hurts so bad we don't walk, which is a very natural, cheap and effective way to stay healthy. You can now have a custom home built but it costs almost as much to get a custom pare of shoes built.

The ultimate answer may be here soon, but in the mean time buy SAS shoes.