How To Order Shoes When You Don’t Have Sizes
As part of their “goody bag,” a client was gifting a pair of TOMS shoes to every attendee. As part of the RSVP, guests were asked their shoe size.
Three weeks before the event, with only one-third of the RSVPs in, we were forced to place the shoe order to ensure their timely arrival. Blindly purchasing 400 pairs of shoes could prove disastrous. Informing a guest his/her shoe size is unavailable would be embarrassing for us, and unacceptable to our client.
Playing “Shoe Size Roulette” was unappealing, so we opted to ask Google. The all-knowing search engine provided the following chart with the average American woman’s shoe size.
| Women’s Size | Percent Sold |
| 4 | 0.90% |
| 4.5 | 0.20% |
| 5 | 1.80% |
| 5.5 | 1.90% |
| 6 | 5.90% |
| 6.5 | 5.80% |
| 7 | 12.50% |
| 7.5 | 11.20% |
| 8 | 16% |
| 8.5 | 11.80% |
| 9 | 13% |
| 9.5 | 4.50% |
| 10 | 9.30% |
| 10.5 | 0.70% |
| 11 | 3% |
| 11.5 | 0.10% |
| 12 | 0.80% |
| 12.5 | 0.10% |
| 13 | 0.30% |
| 14* | <0.1% |
Courtesy of Footwear Market Insights
Now for the mathematical equation (and people think event planning is strictly a creative field!):
Since the RSVPs were still coming in, we had to first calculate the anticipated number of event attendees. The invitation acceptance rate was averaging 25 a day therefore assuming 500 attendees. Ordering 100 extra pairs offered a nice buffer and increased the total shoe order to 600.
After reviewing the current male-female attendee ratio, the shoes were split evenly between the sexes.
Next, the known shoe sizes were subtracted. These remaining shoes were then split according to the above chart. To determine the number of size 10 shoes, we calculated 200 shoes x 9.3% = 18.6. Ordering .6 of a shoe is difficult, so we rounded up.
Men’s sizes were trickier. Google failed on locating a similar chart on men’s average shoe size so we applied the same formula, using the averages of the current RSVPs.
Was there a better way?
