Behind The Scenes: OddShoeFinder.com

Hi Friends,

Sometime ago I was looking for mismatched shoes, and I found this site on internet. After researching the site I thought that this could be a great site for those of us who are looking for a service like this. It happened that the contact was no less than the actual owner (which is something remarkable and odd nowadays). His name is Kent Basson, after exchanging some emails I was interested in knowing how he started his business. Well, the story behind his store, its pretty interesting as well as inspiring.

Instead of writing about it, I will quote his words here:

I started OddShoeFinder.com after my sister had a foot injury that caused her to have to wear shoes of two different sizes.  As a result, she had to buy two pairs of shoes at a time.  While looking into her options, I found that the problem was much more common than I ever imagined.  There are tens of millions of people who wear - or should wear - shoes of two different sizes in the U.S. alone.

Nordstrom department stores sell mismatched pairs of shoes, and several manufacturers will sell mismatched pairs of shoes at an additional charge.  However, millions of people in the U.S. live nowhere near a Nordstrom and the number of manufacturers who will sell mismatched pairs is very limited.

I reasoned that there must be millions of unused shoes left over every year after people with severely mismatched feet buy shoes.  There are also millions of others who can wear those shoes, but there was not a very good way for those people to find each other.

The site allows people to, at no charge, post their own mismatched (or matched, for that matter) pairs of shoes for sale.  There is also a feature that allows users to find their “sole” mates - people with complementary sized feet.

There are thousands of shoes posted on the site at a fraction of retail prices.  One reason is that people have closets full of shoes that they don’t want to throw away and just want someone else to have.  Another reason is that I bought, for ten cents each, thousands of new single shoes that were on their way to landfills because there were no matches.  I sorted and paired as many of the shoes as possible as mismates, and then posted them on the site to get it going.

Kent Basson