Five Fit Failures That Almost Every Brand Makes

At Heeluxe, we love helping brands make better fitting shoes. Through our testing we’ve seen a lot of common fit mistakes that almost every brand makes. Here’s a few of our (least) favorite:

1.Shrink it and Pink It: Women’s feet are not shaped like a guys. Yet the footwear industry assumes that women’s feet will fit into a scaled down men’s shoe. Why? In apparel we have created men’s and women’s silhouettes that provide the best fit (and look better, too). Heck, there’s even gender specific bikes now. There’s no good reason why a shoe brand shouldn’t be making women’s and men’s specific footwear (and big kudos to the few brands that are!)

2.Curse of the Golden Foot. We’ve all heard this before: “Our fit model has a golden foot. It’s perfect.” That’s a well and good but your customer doesn’t have perfect feet. If you’re fitting to a golden foot chances are 40-50% of your potential customers will not fit into your shoe.

3.This kind of lacing:

Unless you’re using a mechanical system like BOA, make sure your laces cris-cross for better fit for your customers. Straight across laces (with “ghillie loops”) usually fail fit testing.

4. “We’re going to use (Shoe Name) last. It’s the best on the market.” This happens too often in fashion and running. A brand has a shoe that is wildly popular. To hop on the coat tails of that shoe, a brand will make their version of it, complete with a copy-cat last. Guess what—it’s not going to fit the same. Unless you’re copying every aspect of that shoe down to the stitch, you’re not going to get the same fit. You’re better off starting from scratch to ensure your last, materials, and construction offer your brand’s signature fit (let us know if you need help with that).

5.“Our customers care more about price than fit” It does not cost more to make a properly fitting shoe. It will cost you plenty if you keep making poor fitting shoes.

Do you have more questions about shoe fit or testing for shoe fit? Heeluxe has you covered. Please email [email protected] with your questions and testing requests.