Unstandardized Shoe Sizes

These days with so many shoe manufacturers out there and shoes being made in so many countries and styles, properly fitting shoes has become more difficult than ever before. In the USA shoes sizes are based on the English shoe size system but over time the sizes has since not become standardized. An english shoe size 10 is a US size 10.5 and in sneakers can be a 10.5 or even an 11. What Happened? Well when most US footwear was manufactured in New England, the sizes pretty much stayed standardized with english sizes in terms of shoe sizes. Well, little by little those shoe factories disappeared and factories popped up over in Asia such as Taiwan,China,Korea and even Vietnam manufacturing shoes for the US market. Well guess what. These shoe factories did not keep a standard set of sizing and size variations started cropping up. I first started noticing this when I was a teenager and liked wearing Puma Basket sneakers. I also started wearing sneakers from a relatively new sneaker company called Nike. I noticed right away that the sizes were not even close. The pumas used the english size system while they were made in Europe and the Nikes were made in Asia. I was able at the time to wear a size 9 in Pumas while I would need a size 10 in Nikes. Did my feet miraculously grow when I put on Nikes. No. Its just that the factories in Asia were using shoe lasts that were not standardized with english shoe standard sizing. That is why I feel it is important to buy brand name shoes that you are familiar with so at least you know that the size of the particular brand will be standardized with shoes of the same brand. I also noticed that shoe sizes and sneaker sizes are two totally different sizes. It seems that shoes and boot sizes are bigger than the equivalent sneaker size. If you wear shoes and boots that are size 10 you will need at least a size 10.5 or sometimes 11 to fit properly depending on the brand.