What a centimetre actually costs

Divide the price of a shoe by the centimetres it adds and you get a number the category never quotes: the cost of a centimetre. Doing that across everything we hold produces a spread so wide it is worth explaining.

The median is $25. The cheapest centimetre in the database is $0.79, and the most expensive is $2,163. That is a range of more than a hundred to one for what is, physically, the same distance off the floor.

You are not paying for the height

Here is the first thing the data says clearly. Sort every shoe by lift and the price barely moves:

The per centimetre column falls as the lift rises, and it falls for a boring reason: the shoe costs roughly the same to make either way, so spreading that cost over more centimetres makes each one cheaper. Height is close to free. The shoe is what you are buying.

What you are actually paying for

The real spread is between brands and materials, not between heights. TallMenShoes house sits at a median of $4.05 per cm, CALDEN sits at a median of $14.39 per cm, CALTO sits at a median of $15.53 per cm, TOTO sits at a median of $17.43 per cm, Chamaripa sits at a median of $41.13 per cm. Same category, same physics, and the top of the range is a multiple of the bottom.

At the far end there are shoes here in exotic leathers running past $12,980. Those are not height products with a markup. They are expensive shoes that happen to have a lift in them, and comparing them on cost per centimetre is close to meaningless. It is still worth doing, because it makes the point: if what you want is to be taller, the centimetres are not where the money is going.

Where the value actually is

Three patterns hold across the whole catalogue.

• Sneakers are the cheapest way to buy height, at a median of $21.13 per cm against $66.33 for dress shoes. They are also the shape that hides it best, which is a rare case of the cheap option being the better one.
• The middle of the range is where the competition is. Around 698 shoes sit at 7 cm alone, and that crowding is what keeps the price down.
• Going very tall costs you choice, not money. Above 10 cm there are only 38 shoes in total. The per centimetre price is fine. There is simply almost nothing to pick from.

The cheapest honest centimetre in the database

Right now, ignoring insoles and counting only shoes that are actually in stock, it is H71921 (Army Green) Super Lightweight at $49 for 8.1 cm, which is $6.05 a centimetre.

That figure moves whenever the merchants move their prices, and this page is rebuilt from their data rather than typed out by hand, so it moves with them.

Rank the whole database by cost per centimetre