with just one foot – they only need one shoe and yet they’re forced to buy two. Finally, footwear retailers are starting to offer solutions. In 2020, US e-commerce giant Zappos launched the Single and Different Size Shoe Program, allowing customers to buy single shoes and build their own pairs out of different sizes from over a dozen brands, including Crocs, Converse and Vans.  And just this week, online adaptive fashion and lifestyle retailer Everyhuman became the first retailer in Australia to sell single shoes and mixed pairs through its new initiative Unpaired.  “This has been something that we’ve been working towards for a while. Ever since we launched Everyhuman, we’ve had customers asking for the ability to buy single and different-sized shoes,” Matt Skerritt, Everyhuman’s founder, told Inside Retail.  “The logistics of how we actually make it happen has always been the thing that prevented us from doing it, and it is a challenge for us to be able to offer this.”  Odd pairs The first step involves separating pairs of shoes from footwear suppliers into single units. Everyhuman assigns an individual SKU to each shoe, which not only indicates the size and style, but also whether it’s a left or a right.  Customers can then add a left shoe and a right shoe to their shopping cart, rather than same-sized pairs, thanks to an updated checkout process.  Besides the manual effort involved in separating pairs of shoes, this is all fairly straightforward, Skerritt said. The biggest challenge is managing the odd pairs that are created when customers buy single shoes and left and right shoes in different sizes.  If a customer buys a size 7 for their left foot and a size 8.5 for their right, for example, Everyhuman has to hope that other customers will eventually want to buy the same sizes for the opposite feet.  To reduce the risk that it will end up with inventory that it can’t sell, or that takes a long time to sell, Everyhuman is focusing on shoes that won’t go out of style.  “We do it in a way where we offer a core range that’s going to be an ongoing range as opposed to seasonal styles. This means we’re actually able to match up odd pairs as they sell,” Skerritt explained. A personal commitment The other factor that makes Unpaired possible is the wholesale pricing Everyhuman has negotiated with Friendly Shoes and Billy Footwear, the two adaptive footwear brands that are part of the initiative. “We’re only able to do this because we’ve got some decent pricing with a number of our core brands. You’re not able to do it where you’ve got low margins, but where we’ve got favourable pricing with a couple of our exclusive core brands, that’s where we can do it,” Skerritt said. Ultimately, he is determined to overcome any challenges related to selling single shoes and mixed pairs because of the mission of Everyhuman.  Skerritt founded the e-commerce business in December 2019 to increase access to stylish fashion and lifestyle products for people of all abilities, whether that’s clothing that can be worn in a wheelchair, or makeup that is easy for people with limited mobility to apply.  This month, Everyhuman launched a wide range of L’Occitane products on its website. The French beauty brand has used braille on its packaging since the 1990s.  “It’s a bit of a sacrifice on our end, but it’s just a commitment we’re wanting to make for our consumer,” he said.