A passion project

While I am a rather easy fit in clothes, I have struggled with my skinny, narrow feet for all my life. I had never owned a pair of well or at least reasonably well-fitting shoes. If I wanted a pair that fit well around the instep and heel, I had to size down so much that my toes started to curl. Still, my passion for classic menswear went hand in hand with a huge interest in well made shoes. But also for people who generally don’t have the kind of fit issues that I have, finding quality shoes here in Germany is not particularly easy, with only a few shops carrying international brands and usually at massive mark ups. Even most German bespoke makers are mostly of questionable quality. For me the English, French, Italian and Japanese master bespoke shoemakers we commonly see on the internet and in books and the beautiful works of art they create were always largely out of reach. On the one hand due to the mere cost of a single pair and the logistics of repeatedly traveling to such places on the other hand. This has obviously become even more important in these times.

I always wondered, since I believe that I can’t be the only one with those problems, why there is no service, which would make ordering bespoke shoes more accessible. For example, by ordering the shoes online and self-measuring your feet at home. The idea of creating an online and remote bespoke shoe program slowly started forming in my head. But, with my rather naive finance background, I soon came to realize, that my idea was much more ambitious and difficult to pull off than I had imagined…