Unfortunately most places in CH don’t sell wide shoes or stock them. Some places will order them in, but they may expect payment up front and give you no right to return them if you don’t like them. (Mentioning no names but one example is a very well known department store beginning with J)

In terms of shoes the last (that’s the bit at the bottom inside the shoes that’s stitched in or glued in cheaper shoes and the whole shoes gets built around that dictates the width), generally speaking the vast bulk of shoes in the shops will contain lasts produced in China which are all one size.

Wider shoes need to be built on a wider last.

Many stores/shoe sales people know nothing about this and will try to convince you that by sizing up you will increase the width, that’s not the case, it remains the same and you are likely to give yourself issues longer term such as bursitis, Morton’s neuroma, bunions etc etc….

The bulk of issues with feet are caused by ultimately poor knowledge of shoes and ill fitting footwear.

The standard width for women is B, the standard width for men is a D, a mens D is equivalent to a womens E.

So if you need wide shoes and are willing to wear mens shoes you could get away with that, certainly with street wear.

For men here though it is a pain in the behind as a mens wide is a 2e or 4e is extra wide, most shops won’t keep stock and some won’t even order them in, often when they do it can take months.

One option is to plug away at individual stores asking if they stock non standard widths or will order in, the bulk will say no but occasionally you find a gem who do/will.

I’ll edit this later with a list of stores I know are happy to order in for you.

Often the best option is to give up and order online from another country and suck it up on the extra payments for tax etc.

If you get a good deal it can actually work out cheaper doing it that way than buying from a shop as the shoe manufacturers here don’t give good prices to Switzerland and ramp the prices up compared to those in other countries.

Online traders (even those with a physical store) will often give very good discounts for your business.

On a well known brand of Trainer is one such example where shoes in shops in eu/overseas are noticeably cheaper in price and there are many others.

Incidentally On do supposedly make a wide model but again it’s not easily available.

Plus I personally don’t rate On shoes as whilst the design works well for waking it doesn’t really seem to work so well under higher weight/impact, as much as they look nice on the eye.

Believe it or not even most of the assistants working in the stores don’t have a grasp of the widths of the shoes and they will frequently give you miss information, such as telling you xyz is the wide model, when in fact that model is actually made / stocked in standard widths and they actually need to order in the wider model.

Generally speaking if it’s a wider shoe you will see the width marked on the box/or label, if there is no mark then assume it is standard.

The vast majority of brands only bother to put out standard widths as they are cheap to buy / make and generally they assume (wrongly I expect) through a lack of customer feedback on this that they fit most people. Sizing up to try and get width is never the answer if you can feel the sides of the shoe then it’s too narrow.

Get the correct size ordered in the right width to avoid issues in the future!

If a shop won’t help complain, even to the manufacturer.

Shoes used to be commonly available in a multitude of different widths, now the majority of manufacturers stick to one standard width which they think fits most. The problem is they are wrong and they need this feedback from people in order to make them up their game.