The other shoe

On our way to shul yesterday, my second daughter and I fleshed out a concept for a business. I will float it here and let someone else do the work of actually creating it and sending me checks not so much out of any legal need but because you know it is the right thing to do.

The aforesaid daughter had a problem during our walk. As she pointed out repeatedly, one of her feet is slightly larger than the other. In order to accommodate that foot, she had to buy shoes which were a half size larger than the smaller foot required. So now, the larger foot is all comfy but the smaller one slips around as she walks. We discussed a variety of inserts or other solutions but she pointed out that this discrepancy and the consequent lack of comfort will plague her through every pair of shoes she buys unless one of her feet magically catches up to the other. I pointed out that I have the same issue and you get used to it. In fact, I have heard that many people have slightly mismatched feet. So she suggested opening a store which allows customers to buy single shoes and not just pairs, or to create mismatched pairs. Imagine going in to a shoe store and saying "I like these -- do you have a right foot in a 5 and a left in a 5 and a half?" Sure, inventory would be a bear and there would be the element of the uncertain because the store might not have the size/foot/style combination you seek, but isn't that just an extension of what happens in shoe stores now? You go in and they say "oh, we don't have that pair in your size. Try these instead."

A quick look online shows that amputees and others who desire only a single shoe have set up odd shoe markets to sell what they don't need or exchange shoes, but that seems rather haphazard and forces one person to take someone else's castoffs. Our store (the name possibilities are endless and groan inducing but I'm sticking with "Un in paired") would have the most recent styles and would have a stockroom brimming with shoes (and a computerized inventory system so we could know which foot of which shoe we have). We will also sell single shoe laces. Why are we being forced to buy a pair of laces when only one is broken? What are they hiding?

What makes this store even more remarkable is that we will also sell single socks. If you lose one in the dryer, bring in the remaining one and we can try to match it. If one rips and you need to replace it, we can do that. If you want to make a sock puppet, but he isn't married or seeing another sock puppet, you can come in a buy just one sock. Or if you want to make a diverse sock puppet community and need a variety of socks, you can pick and choose here. And yes, some of our costs will be defrayed by taking donations of unmatched socks.

This is a brilliant idea, admit it. Start sending those checks, please.