Little Shoes, Big Travelers

Children?s shoes purchased online are usually return travelers: Over 80% spend only a short time with their buyers before being returned to the shop.
It sounds simple: A well-fitting kids? shoe should be at least 12mm longer than the wearer?s foot. What should be simple apparently isn?t. Research done by the Austrian research team ?Children?s Feet ? Children?s Shoes? has shown that in many European countries, more than half of all children wear shoes that are too short in length. For parents, the problem starts with finding correctly-sized shoes. Most labeled sizes are misleading, and the shoes are almost always smaller than indicated. This wouldn?t be a problem if kids were able to feel whether or not they had enough extra space in their shoes, but that is unfortunately not the case. On the researchers? special shoe-test track, children were perfectly comfortable wearing shoes up to five sizes too small. The solution sounds easy: Only by measuring both the foot and the inside length of the shoe can parents be sure that the shoe fits properly. Shoe stores, however, rarely offer parents this option.
Are online shops better? No, according to two surveys conducted by the Austrian researchers. Close to 6000 parents were included in the survey, and the results show that over 80% of all children?s shoes purchased online get returned to the store, most of them because they are too small. The shoes may be small, but the effects are huge: All that extra shipping is expensive and damaging to the environment.
So what do parents want? More exact information concerning the inside length of children?s shoes and on measuring kids? feet correctly. Of 16 online shops tested, only one small shop in Germany fulfilled both criteria (www.kleinerglueckspilz.de).
Has the situation improved since? The research team will be re-conducting the survey in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the fall of 2014 ? we?ll keep you posted on the results.