How Nike, Converse, Vans, and others bring big-ass customized shoes to your big-ass feet.
When you have big-ass feet, you learn to lower your expectations about choice. The day I wrote this article Zappos.com offered 5481 Men’s sneakers & athletic shoes in Size 13. But when I searched for my true dimension of Size 17, I was greeted with this insult result:
“Men Sneakers & Athletic Shoes”
That’s a choice reduction of 97%. Zappos’ search refinement selectors for Performance, Brand, and Color are absurdly pointless when all their Size 17 shoes fit on two pages. This isn’t their fault since most shoe companies simply don’t make big-ass shoes.
But the following shoe companies not only make big-ass shoes, but they also allow for dozens of color and fabric options for the logo, lining, laces, sole, tongue, heels and more. For an extremely tall person with limited shoe choices, it’s the difference between getting a Mickey Mouse sticker and going to Disneyland.
All of their shoe design customer experiences will be ranked on the CircusTall scale of “Yeah!” (it’s awesome), “Meh.” (it’s okay), or “Eh…” (it’s underwhelming).
NikeID
Ease of use:
Nike started selling NikeID customized shoes way back in 1999, and their OG status is reflected in their refined sense of user experience. Each shoe is clearly represented by static zoomable images taken from six basic angles, making it easy to tell which area of the shoe has been changed by your actions. Their selection interface is clean and readable.
Customization options:
They have a staggeringly large selection of shoe styles in multiple sports, including basketball models from such one-named icons as LeBron, Kyrie, Kobe, and, er, Paul George. Nearly every section of the shoe can be customized from one of a dozen colors, with additional metallic choices for the swoosh, and custom text on the heel.(1)
Special features:
Some models allow you to customize your width or select images for the sole. Nike also has a respectable selection of custom cleats.
Maximum size: Men 18, Women 15
Number of styles: 49 for Men, 24 for Women
Price: $95–$340
How does it fit?: True to size
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Vans Customs
Ease of use:
The Vans Customizer allows you to easily rotate a gorgeous 3D model of your shoe with buttery smoothness, making design choices simple to view and fun to change. Their selection interface is tidy and compact, allowing for the shoe to display as large as possible.
Customization options:
Slip-on, Authentic, SK8-Hi, Old Skool, and Era models are available across four styles, but the big play here is the sheer volume of fabric choices. You can choose Peanuts characters, Major League Baseball logos, cat heads, pizza, plants, donuts, and on some shoes you can even add flames or checkerboards along on the foxing (aka the rubber sides of the shoe).
Special features:
Unlike anyone else in this guide, Vans allows you to upload your own images to add to your shoe design. It’s $10 extra, only applies to Slip-on and Authentic models, and the Terms and Conditions is unsurprisingly restrictive, but the power to make a truly individual mark on your design is compelling.
Maximum size: Men 18, Women 11
Number of styles: 18 for Men, 13 for Women
Price: $75–$110
How does it fit?: True to size
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Converse Custom
Ease of use:
Converse is owned by Nike, so in a bold move of corporate synergy Converse Custom uses the same interface as NikeID. Each shoe is clearly represented by static zoomable images taken from six basic angles, making it easy to tell which area of the shoe has been changed by your actions. Their selection interface is clean and readable.
Customization options:
You can drape Chuck Taylors, One Stars, and Jack Purcells with a wide variety of colors, rubber sidewalls, metals, and fabrics, including leather and satin. If you’ve dreamed of strutting around in wine-colored velvet Chuck high tops with an embossed leather logo, you’re in for a treat.
Special features:
Floral prints, camouflage, and leopard skin are available in some models, as well the ability to place different patterns on each side of your shoe, bowling-style.
Maximum size: Men 17, Women 13
Number of styles: 26 for Men, 6 for Women
Price: $75–$150
How does it fit?: True to size
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mi adidas
Ease of use:
Obliquely named for a song from former Adidas spokes-rappers Run-D.M.C., the mi adidas site is cinematically fluid. You can rotate an angled shoe that convincingly responds to your touch. The selection interface fades up when you need it and fades away when you’re done, leaving your shoe as prominent as possible, but only on mobile. The desktop site’s design is straight Clunkasorous Rex, with an ungainly large interface and tiny shoe display.
Customization options:
They have a cornucopia of running, basketball and tennis shoes, featuring Superstar, Gazelle, Stan Smith, and Pureboost models. In addition to applying colors to multiple shoe areas, you can also select numbers, sock liner text, lace jewels, and glow-in-the-dark soles.
Special features:
mi adidas is the only custom shoe vendor to offer slides, which you can then customize with the debossed icon of a fist, if debossed fist icons are your thing.
Maximum size: Men 20, Women 15.5
Number of styles: 38 for Men, 29 for Women
Price: $45–$170
How does it fit?: A bit snug, but true to size
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YourReebok
Ease of use:
The YourReebok site is a bit clumsy in execution. The selection interface is quite large, the shoe area is quite small, and you can’t can’t change shoe angle until you’ve finalized a color selection. After experiencing the tactile sensuousness of the Vans site, the tappity-tappity-tappitiness of YourReebok is frustrating.
Customization options:
Crossfit Nano7, Club C, InstaPump and Havasu models are available for customizing with a respectable selection of colors and material. Havasa features fun patterns such as Tangled Clouds and Junk Workout. The InstaPump model allows you the change the color of the pump bladder, so that’s something.
Special non-feature:
YourReebok has the smallest shoe sizes of all the vendors in this guide, barely qualifying for as a resource for those with big-ass feet.
Maximum size: Men 15, Women 11
Number of styles: 6 for Men, 6 for Women
Price: $75–$155
How does it fit?: True to size
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NB1
Ease of use:
New Balance’s NB1 lets you completely rotate an angled shoe horizontally, which is smooth to use for viewing selected areas, if not quite Vans smooth. The selection interface takes up half of your screen, shrinking the view of your selected shoe, but the design is clear enough to prevent you from getting lost in the details.
Customization options:
NB1 has but three baseball and three running models. There’s a minimum of options in fabrics and accoutrements but they do have a nice selection of color choices.
Special features:
All the vendors allow for custom text, but NB1 is the only one that lets you pick individual heel numbers. They also let you upgrade to gold-plated cleats, if you want to go to “Beast Mode”.
Maximum size: Men 16, Women 13
Number of styles: 6 for Men, 6 for Women
Price: $125–$200
How does it fit?: True to size
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Big-ass Customized Shoes Summary
These six vendors offer thousands of shoe options to owners of big-ass feet. All of these sites feature pre-designed starter models for you to play with, as the potential for creating great ugly is real. Nike, Converse, Vans and mi adidas (on mobile only) are the easiest and most fun to use, but the other two have value as well, as a meh choice is better than no choice at all.
Number of shoe styles were calculated from Men Size 12+ and Women Size 10+. Complete offerings of shoe style, sizes and prices are subject to change. Sites were judged by their mobile interfaces.
Image Credits: Mark Montgomery French
Footnotes
| ↑1 | All custom shoe sites instantly reject any customer text that contains profanity, hate speech, and most importantly, the names of their competitors. But they don’t seem to have a handle on slang from The Urban Dictionary, since “skeet” sailed right through the censor. As did “juggalo”. Whoop whoop. |
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