Hi, Normally I wear new balance size 10 4e (wide) shoes, what can be the comparable shoes for badminton and where can we buy them in US. Thanks --rubs
Yonex SHB200 are 4E shoes. you can find them in many Yonex badminton dealers. a bit to the expensive side though.
The SHB200EX which is widely available everywhere is not 4E spec'd at all, unlike the SHB200WM JP. In fact I don't think that the Yonex EX market has any 4E shoes at all (exception being SHB80WSP, SHB79WSP).
I've seen wide Yonex shoes on Rakuten, the Japanese equivalent of Amazon (and the owners of the US website buy.com). They ship to the US. I'm curious to try them, as I usually wear a 4E, but I've been told by a local Yonex distributor that a Japanese 4E may not be the same as an American 4E and will likely be a lot smaller. I don't think he knows for sure, though. I had been playing with New Balance 653GM 4E shoes, a model that has been discontinued for a number of years, but still available on a couple of websites (often listed as a racquetball shoe), but I've bought up all of my size and can get them anymore. A friend of mine saw his size on one of those sites and recently bought all 3 pairs they had. They're really, really great shoes. I wrote New Balance, telling them they need to make an indoor court shoe with a gum sole, because there is not one single manufacturer making them in a wide size. I also told them to make sure they market it as a multi-court shoe good for badminton, squash, table tennis, racquetball and volleyball, because their old 653GM, despite being a fantastic shoe for badminton and the rest, was marketed as a Tennis shoe only, so when people search for a wide badminton shoe, it won't show up. If more people would write them, telling them that we need a wide, multi-court, gum soled shoe, I think they may make one. As it is, I was told that my request would be sent to the research and development team. I let them know that so many makers make that type of shoe - Nike, Asics, Prince/Ektelon, Wilson, Mizuno, etc. - but none make a wide one. Currently, I'm am using the Ektelon T9 Roadster Wide. It's actually a pretty good shoe and the 2E wide size fits my 4E feet perfectly. This shoe ALSO has been discontinued and Ektelon has stated that they will no longer make a wide shoe. However, you can still find this shoe around the net, so if you have wide feet, this should work out just fine for you.
EX is the export version. That's the kind you can get anywhere and it's the version that would normally be available to you. As opposed to the JP (Japan) version of Yonex shoes, which are in general of much higher quality. WM stands for Wide (4E shoe) Mid (cut - will cover the ankle more than normal low cut shoes)
