If The Shoe Fits, Charge it!

Recently, I went to the mall to look for a new pair of sneakers. I haven’t bought many tennis shoes in the last few decades and was rather overwhelmed by the wall of shoes that greeted me. There are shoe stores that sell nothing but athletic shoes…hundreds of choices at all different prices. I remember fondly the good old days when there were four sneakers to choose from. Life was so much simpler then.  You had high-tops, low-tops, black and white.  That was it. Make your choice, find your size and you were out the door. Oh yes, they were about ten bucks per pair and they were made in America. Today the athletic shoe industry boasts $15 billion in sales annually just in the United States.  In researching the subject, I counted 78 different brands with untold style choices among them. Americans buy in excess of 350 million pairs per year and many own multiple styles for specific activities.  Naturally you need a separate pair for walking, running, hiking, aerobics, tennis, basketball, and lets not forget cross-training; whatever that is.  I wonder if they have a special shoe for just sitting on my deck? Much of this hysteria began when the industry hired celebrity endorsers to tout their products and star struck budding athletes rushed out to pay as much as $150 for a pair so they could “be like Mike.”  Today, some families spend more money on athletic shoes for their children than they do on books for them to read.  That gets me to wondering about where our priorities are. Back in my youth, we wore our tennis shoes until they developed a hole in the sole that was so big that we started wearing out our socks.  The first hint that we needed a new pair was when we noticed our socks getting wet while walking to school on a rainy day.  Today, it is estimated that you need to replace your athletic shoes somewhere between 350 and 550 miles not when you get a hole in the bottom!  Industry spokespersons suggest that runners who clock 20 miles per week should be buying new shoes every 20 weeks.  That’s about three pair a year and only one sport!  Yes, the stinky old sneaker has come a long way in the last 50 years.  Who would have thought that the industry would have ever grown to such grand proportions? It’s just too bad that we couldn’t have kept all those jobs and all that money in our own country.  Next time I plop down big bucks for a new pair of sneakers, maybe I can find a box that says “Made in the USA.”

 

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