I regularly have this problem when buying certain items, not just electronics but also clothing, home/kitchen items, etc. Often times i get frustrated and end up not buying anything, though i recently bought a blood pressure cuff on Amazon and what i did was see what was a legitimate brand that was being sold at pharmacies and looked for that on Amazon.
They seriously need to stop these mystery Chinese brands but Amazon really has no incentive to do so.
For belts i’ve been leaning towards getting a Saddleback leather belt. I’ve seen their bags and while overpriced the quality is phenomenal, and they have a lifetime warranty on their leather goods. On that alone i’m really wanting the belt and one of their wallets
Can’t speak to their boots, but their scrubs are my absolute favorite. Heavy and durable. Their outerwear, though, lives by the label, not the performance.
My Timberlands are RIP (Resting in Pieces) on the bottom shelf of our rack by the door. I can’t seem to find a similar Timberland model with the right toebox. After 10 years, I am going to have to give up, I think.
I bought factory-seconds Bates desert boots (cordura nylon, higher tops, which I needed) and got burned because the irregularity they came with affected the front end fit really significantly. From these folks, who do offer a lot of irregular and factory-seconds:
(Factory-seconds re coveralls and overalls are not so bad, but man I will never go for seconds on footwear again. Lesson learned. 
)
I will have to check out Rocky’s. Thanks for that heads up.
Wolverine women’s boots are all pointy-toed (so those will not work for me), and the men’s sizes don’t go down far enough for me (and I note they have a different toe box).
Oho! Another project, tracking those down in States… thanks for this.
Some day! One day… this. My goal. It’s that or foot surgery.
sigh
I have the same problem.
I can only wear New Balance sneakers, 4 models or so to choose from, in the size I wear- 6E width. it’s the largest width they make. 10.5" only- I have huge feet that no company makes shoes that fit comfortably.
My feet aren’t fat- they’re just huge. Most boots don’t fit me. I can never figure out why they seem to think human beings have toes that fit within a rounded arch at the tip. I wear the wolverines I do because they have square toes- they look like Herman Munster shoes and they are the only things that fit me comfortably but I think they have stopped making them now.
I am seriously waiting for technology that will let me 3D print my shoes real shoes that I can actually use because shoe manufacturers apparently are blind to people like me and make our lives miserable
Don’t even get me started on rock climbing shoes- I was at the climb shop in Yosemite itself and even they had nothing there that would fit me I was lucky enough to find a very tight pair of approach shoes.
someone give me a 3D printer for synthetic leather please
I have a Saddleback bag and it is super, SUPER well constructed. My only complaint is that it’s a little bigger than I need (it was a gift) which makes it somewhat heavier than I want as an everyday-briefcase-carry.
TIL: Carhartt makes scrubs. +5 Respect.
Grr… Most shoes aren’t built for the shape of human feet, they are built on pointy lasts that are pretty and symmetrical looking, as if our big toe is in the middle. 
My feet are ordinary sized, but I insist on a buying shoes with a big enough toe box, one that doesn’t squish my big toe, which can be hard to find.
I have total Fred Flintstone feet. WIDE forefoot and a narrow little heel. Love me some Birks! Ugly as sin, but comfy. Work boots I wear Rockport steel toes. Lots of room for my piggies and still holds my heel without slipping, but heavy as hell. Have yet to find hiking boots that don’t either blister my heel or squish my toes, seems like it is one or the other.
I wear those a lot. Bartending. Waiting tables. Walking everywhere on several continents. Lotsa time on my feet. Wearing them has allowed my feet to spread out and now they won’t shrink back up to fit inside “normal” shoes WTFTM.
They are the only shoes except for my Keens that don’t hurt my feet.
Kinda heartbroken the business that resoled my Birks for decades is now officially not and probably never again resoling our old soles. Argh. New Birks are not cheap!
I wish they’d just get off their high horse and make very quotidian work boots.
Here’s what they have, not exactly robust and probably lacking in the steel toe department:
Behold, a new world awaits:
I will absolutely look into those!
That’s good information. I guess I was speaking in more general terms. Appliances in particular.
I would suggest Altra. They have very wide forefoots for splaying out your toes and relatively narrow heels.
If only. Despite being male, I have to wear an 11 double AA women’s walking shoe to get a good fit. Even those are hard to find, especially. I’ve totally given up on mens’ shoes.
Wow, if there were some way in your spare time (of which so few of us have, I realize) to pick up the trade of shoemaker. Actual shoemaking. Not cobbler. Shoemaker.
First up would be getting a last made of your foot, exactly. I know, I know, this is all pretty much impossible fantasy.
I recall this:
and in it, this:
To get an idea of the proper placement and height of the arch, Reynolds normally has a custom-fit customer try on several pairs off the shelf, but Bonds’ feet are too distinctive for that to be useful.
“I think that bunion might have grown a bit,” Reynolds observes. Bonds nods affirmatively. Reynolds continues: “How are the pair you’re wearing now doing for you? What you should feel in a pair of boots is nothing.”
“They feel fine,” Bonds reports. “But the pegs on the left one are loose.” Reynolds hands the boot to an assistant to reset the lemonwood pegs that fine bootmakers use on the arch to allow the boot to breathe.
The mark of a perfect fit: you feel nothing pressing or loose.
… sigh…
Add in the ten years’ experience! Or is it fifteen? It would be nice to have the time and expertise to DIY for a lot of things nowadays . . .
I’ve got really wide feet (what my Hawaii family call “poi pounders”), so I can be uncomfortable in very nice very well made boots. The “custom” process at Wesco isn’t true custom. You’re not getting a custom made last or anything. You measure your food at several places, and do some outlines, and they make a boot based on the measurements. The price wasn’t bad. About $300 when I had it done. But they’ve lasted me years and years. Comfortable years for weird wide feet…
Yeah. I mostly like hiking in ultralight trail runners, but after five or six hundred miles, they’re toast. Since lately I’ve been putting in 30 miles a week or so, I kind of go through them.
My low-cut work shoes (but with steel toes, of course) are Keen. The high-top Gore-Tex ones are Timberland. The company bought both of those for me; I buy low ones one year and high ones the next.
For hiking, I kind of alternate between ultralight New Balance trail runners and sensible Merrell hiking shoes - switching to Sorel pac boots when Old Man Winter puts in an appearance. Sorel Caribou has been around for donkeys’ years. It’s a competent snow boot. It fits my snowshoe bindings, it’s stiff enough to take a C1 crampon, and it’s a third the price of plastic mountaineering boots.
I doubt I’ll ever be able to justify to myself the price of a pair of Limmer boots, but that’s the real thing. They last a lifetime if maintained.
I miss the Pivetta boots that I had in the '70s. Those were too heavy, but amazing. They went missing in a move in 1984.
My only winter-weight (for Kansas winters) coat is a Carhartt coat that’s about 10 years old. It replaced an earlier Carhartt that lasted more that 10 years, too. Even when replacing it, I really only did it because the cuffs were fraying a bit - the coat still functions great and I keep it around for camping, going to the farm, etc. I only dry clean it because I buy the black ones and those fade too much in the laundry, but the color’s kept really bright (if that even applies to black… lol) and it looks great whether I’m dressing up or dressing down.
I’ve been feeling for a long time that certain skills and knowledge are just too indispensable yet they’ve largely been phased out by most folks like tailoring. As far as custom shoes i believe there are actual shoemakers in Mexico but then that would necessitate a trip there, which is not terribly convenient. There’s likely some shoemakers in the US but i fear what the cost of custom hand-made shoes look like.
I’m glad i have pretty average feet (7 or 7 1/2 mens) but it’s also kind of a pain in the ass because its usually the size that sells out first and i’m terribly picky about shoes.
