Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
For the last 136 years, from its St. Louis headquarters, Brown Shoe has been designing shoes for the common guy and gal. The person tasked with making sure all those women’s shoes fit comfortably just happens to be a man, director of technical services Don Zeuschel. With about 40 years at the company, he’s seen everything from stiletto heels to light-up sneakers come and go.
• I oversee the fitting process, ensuring the best fits for all the Brown Shoe brands.
• The number-one thing we’re trying to make happen is to make sure every shoe that we fit and sell in the stores be as comfortable as possible; we want every style, from no matter what division at Brown Shoe, to be the most comfortable shoe that a woman ever puts on her foot
• I look at women’s feet all the time. I’ve been doing this for 30, 35 years. I started as a pattern trainee. I would go to airports, all sorts of places, and no matter where I went I would look down to see if people had a pair of shoes that I’d worked on. It’s hard to tell sometimes, because this is a knockoff industry; people will do versions of your shoes, but yeah, you find yourself looking at feet all the time.
• Sometimes you strike up a conversation with someone and you ask what style of shoe that they’re wearing. “Is that a Naturalizer?” You ask them how do they like it. You’re wanting their opinion to help make the best product that you can. The Internet has changed that, though; you don’t have to ask as much now.
• The lines like the Carlos Santana line, or the Vera Wang line, those divisions are a lot more fashion-forward, with higher heels, and often don’t cover the foot as much, those are more of a challenge to get to fit. Something like Dr. Scholl’s is easier, those are comfort shoes; we have to make them that way. But some of the others may sacrifice a little bit of comfort for fashion.
• A big part of a woman’s wardrobe is their footwear, and we work to keep them as fashionable as possible but as comfortable as possible. Sometimes we make recommendations to modify the way the shoe looks to make it fit the foot better. Like, say it’s a shoe with only one strap that holds the foot — that strap has to be in the right place.
• Our standard is 6M, a women’s medium, and we’ve used it for 25 years. The drama comes when a woman goes into a store and puts on a 6M when she’s really a 7Y. People don’t always like to hear they’re not putting on the right size. Most companies are one-width companies. We used to be noted for five and six widths of shoes — it was easy to fit any customer. Now you’re working with one width of shoes; women with really narrow and wide feet can be much more challenging. We do still sometimes offer two or three or four widths in some shoes.
• There are some things that really shock you. The biggest seller about 30, 35 years ago was this dumb, little, plain pump and we’ve sold millions of pairs of it, even while everybody complained about how ugly it was.
• The most recent, bizarre shoe we worked on has rhinestones and spikes around the back of the heel of the shoe. Each shoe probably weighs a pound because it has so much metal on it. We recommend women be careful about scraping their heel against their other heel, they can hurt themselves. It could even be used for self-defense.
• A lot of people find the giant high-heel sculpture in front of Brown Shoe attractive or interesting. A lot of people take photos of it. It came from the City Museum. We’ve had people climb inside of it before, but it has to be with prior permission. You can’t steal it, it weighs a ton.
• Trends tend to repeat over the years. Every 10 or 15 years heel heights come back around. Low heels are popular for one or several years, then mid or high heels get more popular. Right now it’s a mix of everything —anything goes. We have shoes with three- or four-inch or higher heels that are very popular, and little flat ballerina-style shoes that can roll up in your hand that are very popular, too.
• The average woman owns at least 30 pairs of shoes, I would guess. I really don’t know. It depends on how big their closet is, probably.
• Probably one area that is difficult to fit is the ball of the foot, because as far as variations in women’s feet, a lot of women have bunions, and they have them from varying degrees — you can go from a woman with a perfectly shaped foot to a woman with a huge, horrible, bunion, and we have to fit the whole gamut in-between. If you have to get a wider width, then the heel doesn’t fit, probably. The heel is also a difficult area. Some women have very wide heels, some have very narrow heels. We don’t want it the shoe to slip when people are walking.
• We just announced that we are licensing out our children’s brands, so we won’t be making those anymore. I have a lot of experience with children’s shoes. I was working on them when the light-up shoes first came out—it was really a challenge to get those to work right. You had to hide the battery inside the shoes, and get all the lights to light reliably and for a good duration. Now, the tech is unbelievable. You can light 20 lights all in succession and have them pulse to music. It also serves a function for nighttime, for added safety for kids playing at night.
• We have not made the shoes where you push a button and roller skates come out -- and I’m glad. I think those are lawsuits waiting to happen. It would be a big challenge to make that safe.
• If you’ve noticed, within the past couple of years some women’s shoes have a “rocker bottom.” They’re called fitness walkers, and they’re designed to stretch their calves and make them more attractive. We did some styles that were designed to do that. That was an extreme construction.
• Wear a shoe that doesn’t hurt. That’s tough advice for some women. A lot of women are willing to sacrifice and hurt their feet because it’s something they want to wear — so we try not to make a lot of high-fashion shoes that are painful. We would never intentionally approve a show if we think we have a fit issue with it.
• From having it done before, I think you should get a foot massage every week or heck, every day. My daughter happens to be a nail technician here in St. Louis, and she has given me foot massages before, and they’re to die for.
• I’m not a professional orthopedic person, but I would say it’s a pretty bad idea to pull on your toes until the knuckles pop. It sounds kinda kinky.
• The number-one thing we’re trying to make happen is to make sure every shoe that we fit and sell in the stores be as comfortable as possible; we want every style, from no matter what division at Brown Shoe, to be the most comfortable shoe that a woman ever puts on her foot.
• Would I rather be pigeon-toed or bowlegged? I think I’d rather be bowlegged. That would be easier for me to ride a horse. [Laughs]
• I wear the same pair of shoes every day, my athletic shoes.
