Why Not Sell Single Shoes?
Shoes, in my experience, are always sold in pairs. Should they be?
I can think of at least two arguments against. One is that sometimes one shoe of a pair wears out or gets damaged and you have to throw the whole pair away. This is particularly likely if your feet are not perfect mirror images of each other. Mine are not — my right foot has some lumps on it, apparently normal and non-dangerous sorts of lumps that sometimes occur with aging. The result is that my right shoes wear out faster than my left. Since I have been buying the same shoes from the same seller for years, I now have two pair — possibly a third if I looked harder — plus a number of unpaired left shoes.
That, of course, suggests the other advantage to selling single shoes. When I get new shoes they are comfortable on the left foot, tight on the right. Eventually, after time to stretch, they are loose on the left foot, comfortable on the right. But if I could buy a right shoe one size wider than the left ...