The RITZ Stick
This is an embarrassing admission: soon after I started developing an interest in menswear, I realized I didn’t know my real shoe size. Shopping primarily online, I wasn’t sure what size to order and guessed—incorrectly. I ultimately went to one of the few brick-and-mortar retailers in my area that sold quality footwear and was sized by a sales associate with a Brannock device. I thanked him, went home, and ordered far more affordable shoes from eBay. Still feel horrible about that (please don’t ban me from your establishments, proprietors and employees of nice brick-and-mortar menswear shops).
Funny thing is, I know that I’m not the only guy who’s found out they don’t know their shoe size, or has ordered the wrong size for years. And even if you have been properly sized, as you age your shoe size can change, so it’s probably good to check it every few years or so. If you don’t want to be a jerk like 2010-era me and go to a shoe store to use the Brannock device with no intent of making a purchase, allow me to propose an alternative: buy a RITZ Stick.
Made in the USA and just $22.50, the RITZ Stick is a simple wooden device consisting of a wooden base marked with measurements, a heel stop, and a toe stop on a metal slider. To measure your foot’s length, you place your heel against the heel stop, slide the toe stop until it touches your big toe, and note the measurement. For your foot’s width, you turn the device 90 degrees, measure the widest part of your foot, and then flip the stick over to find your size using a handy chart printed underneath.
How accurate is the RITZ Stick? Good enough. I was a bit surprised at the shoe size it reported: I normally wear an 8.5D, but it measured one of my feet as a 7.5E and the other as an 8EE (or maybe even 8EEE). I thought that was odd, but then thought to dig up an old email exchange with Meermin’s Pepe Albaladejo, who I’d sent detailed foot measurements—taken twice—for MTO shell cordovan longwings. Pepe ultimately recommended a 7.5UK (equivalent to an 8.5D US), but noted that it was a bit of a compromise for my feet, which he described as 7.5UK in width but 6.5UK in length. That seemed to validate the RITZ Stick measurements, and the humor that after all these years I’m still not wearing the right shoe size is not lost on me.
One of the great things about the RITZ Stick is that it can measure men’s women’s and kids’ feet, so one stick is good for the whole family. Compare this to the Brannock: a men’s Brannock device is $59, a combo men’s/women’s Brannock device is $61, and a kids’ Brannock device is $55. That means you’d need to spend at least $116 on two Brannock devices to do the same job as the $22.50 RITZ Stick, whose slim profile I expect tucks away in the corner of a closet much more easily than the Brannock devices.
And given the way my three boys can each go up a shoe size every three or four months, the RITZ Stick has been worth it to me for the time savings alone, given the alternative of hauling the kids around town for shoe shopping.
The RITZ Stick is $22.50 at Amazon.
