We are often told by our customers that they have had their former ski boots made by a bootfitter, but that the ski boot still did not fit or was even painful. A number of bootfitters claim that they offer a fitting and that they can make a customized ski boot. But this is simply not the case.
“Bootfitting“ means simply ”optimising“ an already existing standard “basic form“ of boot. Typical bootfitting is not made-to-measure, it is more making adjustments to pre-prepared ski boots. The comfort, stablity, etc. are not nearly the same.
This is what a bootfitter does with a ski boot:
There are four common methods. In one of them, the makers of ski boots have already integrated the fittting into their boots, for example by an adjustable liner or by an upper boot that can be shaped by the application of heat. There are also traditional pre- and post-adjustments of ski boots by means of tools. And even the simple sale of a pre-adjusted insole is sometimes regarded as bootfitting!
The meaning of “bootfitting“ is not easy to state clearly. It is as if one were to try to nail a pudding to the wall.
Albrecht Zeisler
This is the difference of a customized ski boot
What we can state with 100 per cent certainty is that bootfitting has nothing to do with ski boots made to measure. Only a ski boot consisting of the following elements can be considered a customized ski boot:
- Ski boot shape (without liner)
- Custom-filled liner
- A ski boot insole (not pre-formed, simply a flat blank) to give an individual footbed
If you have these three elements, then you are having a custom made ski boot for you, and this has nothing to do with bootfitting.
