Strolz v. Surefoot?

We're planning to purchase a pair of custom-fit boots for my wife.

I have Surefoot foam boots. They're the only boot solution that's ever worked for me - perfect fit and astounding performance (wiggle your toe, and your edge moves).

I've since read about Strolz boots, of Austrian fame. Apparently, they not only provide a custom foam liner and foot bed, but also custom shape the shell?

The price appears similar (about $1000 to $1200).

Does anyone know how Strolz compares to Surefoot?

Does Strolz have any locations in Colorado?

Have you also considered Daleboot?

I am interested in them also for a custom boot - - and would be interested in any comments on this solution too. Sorry, don't mean for this to be a hijack.

Strolz is a true custom boot because it is customizable, Surefoot is not. A Strolz liner is, in my opinion, far superior to a Surefoot, or any other liner. Strolz chooses who sells and fits their boots: Surefoot doesn't really have bootfitters, they have salesman who may or may not have any bootfitting, or skiing experience, but are highly skilled in selling you a boot that doesn't flex, or a foam liner your child doesn't need. The shops that are able to sell Strolz have real bootfitters that can solve real problems, and the foam liner is included.

At my resort, the only instructors who use surefoot boots, get them for free. Those instructors who are using them, rarely use the Surefoot footbeds.

I appreciate the feedback. Given that I'm happy with my Surefoot fit, it appears that Strolz could be an even better solution for my wife.

Strolz doesn't list any locations (apart from the head office in New England). Do you know if they have a shop in CO?

For fit purposes, Strolz sounds like a great choice -- if you can find a source in Colorado.

Glad you've had a good experience with Surefoot. Mine was, unfortunately, not like that. I bought Lange boots from a Surefoot shop in Utah, had the full workup (custom footbeds, alignment, fitting) but immediately had foot pain, which got worse over the course of lots of fitting work at various Surefoot shops.


You can also check America's Best Bootfitters at http://www.bootfitters.com.

I was fitted for Strolz last year after having a hell of a time with off the shelf boots. I have skied for the last 30 years and have always figured that boots wern't meant to be confortable. I know know diffrent. Here is a video of my fitting and foaming, I was lucky and live 2 miles from a Strolz fitter, and where I live that is very amazing.

Very cool! That's as complete a description as I'll ever find. Thanks.

The fitter seemed thorough, and competent. The foaming process is a bit different from Surefoot.

Question: I've heard that Strolz also heats and shapes the shell. If so, I didn't see it in this video.

No offense, but the video looks more like an infomecial and advertisment than anything else.

The real question is, how do they ski? I would like to hear from skiers(more than one) who have had the boots for a while and can point out the positives and negatives -- which all boots have.

Watching the foaming was sort of interesting. But how did they do with shell fit - - and then any customizations of the shell?

How was the custom footbed made: weighted or unweighted?

Also, did they do any canting measurements, and then any necessary adjustments/grinding ,etc.?

And as has already been asked: how do they ski??

If you want a more affordable custom boot I would recommend daleboot. First, they have a multipart shell system that can be customized quite well. Their EVA heat molded liner is custom designed for their shell, though it is now made for them by Intuition. It has similar characteristics of other intutiion liners in being very warm and comfortable. The flex characteristics of the shell are adjustable to your preference and the boot soles are removable and cantable.

They are happy to use your existing insole, a stock one, or a custom one they make on the spot.

Really the only downside I see to them is that they are not on the hill (at least not their main facility in SLC-perhaps one of their resellers are), and they are not certified pedorthists so if you have problem that a regular custom boot and sole might not solve, you may not find out until afterward. I've been skiing on them for about 8 years and am pretty happy. They have always been willing to stay late past business hours to do some adjustments. Travel time from BCC/LCC without traffic is about 35 minutes, a bit shorter from park city.

BTW, stay away from surefoot. half the people do not know squat and will steer you to the wrong shell then claim that their customizing will solve your problems. And their CNC footbed process is the stupidest way imaginable to make a custom footbed. An actual impression of your foot yields more information than their geewiz scanner.

I just went through the process for Strolz, I had never heard of them before and it was like discovering oil in my back yard to find out about them, since I have alien feet, or as the boot fitters like to say "a conundrum". They basically take measurements of your feet and send them to Austria and then Strolz sends you the right shell to begin with. Then they are foamed and the strolz shells are designed in such a way that they are easier to mod then some others perhaps. My shells, had to have the boot board dropped down and the cuff straightened up in order to accommodate my alien feet. Straightening the cuff meant rivoting it, which turned flex to zero, so then then he had to add some flex. We also replaced the crappy Strolz buckles with the buckles from my Nordicas. He also did footbeds of course, heel lifts and some tilt adjustment inside the boot, and canting is yet to be done.

The bottom line is that my feet require custom work from a very knowledgeable source which is really the hard part, finding a guy like that. A guy like that can hack almost any boot together to make it work. But the Strolz just doesn't look hacked when its all done and theoretically it was less work to do all these mods then it would have been with any other. In my initial testing, so far I am pretty happy with the results, but the price tag is still close to $1500 all included.

Strolz boots also have some abduction in them.

I highly recommend Park City Ski Boot.

PS - stay away from surefoot, I agree.

Hello,

I am the Pacific Northwest Dealer & fitter of Strolz. Each pair of boots I sell are shell fit to make sure the shell is correct. Most of the people I fit need shell and liner modifications, which is done about 70 - 80% of the time.

I use the Conformable Custom Pro footbed and it is made in a unweighted position. I also do a full stance evaluation and make adjustments as needed. I do not do sole plaining however we have a local ski shop - Hillcrest Ski and Sports - that has a boot sole plainer with a very experienced staff.

By the way, the customer of mine that shot the video showed up for the foaming and shot the vid (unscripted) so it does not show the whole process. We hope to update the video sometime.

You can find out more info at my web site: www.strolzskiboots.com

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Don

If you got a Surefoot salesman like the one I had, you'd regret wasting your money on Surefoots.
You seem to have gotten lucky.
If you can be sure that your wife will get the same service from the same individual who made yours, Surefoots might be ok.
It does seem as though you can be CERTAIN that the Strolz fitter will be competent; which isn't the case with Surefoot stores.
The difference between my experience and that of others, is that the NYC Surefoot employees I dealt with were incompetent a-holes. This is not true of all Surefoot employees in all stores, obviously.

I'm not a Surefoot cheerleader. Technically, I wasn't even foamed by Surefoot, but by a long-term former Surefoot tech who foamed me at a local shop in Bellingham. Same Conformable liner, and same process.

In my case, I'm 100% happy. The fit couldn't be better, and I love the firm, close contact with the liner. It transmits the slightest movement to the ski. I skied for decades in pain before this fitting. It worked wonderfully.

I agree that most Surefoot employees don't appear to be bootfitting veterans. They're selling the system.

Strolz interests me because the fitting process is limited to a select group of premium bootfitters. The expertise is high, and their reputation impeccable

In general, custom shaping makes sense. Boots are hard and feet are soft. Foam fills the gap.

I still haven't heard of any Strolz fitters in Colorado. Given their rep, you'd thing they'd have a shop here.

I believe there is a Strolz dealer in Vail. Get a hold of Tim at www.strolzboots.com, he can tell you.
Tim works for the east coast importer of Strolz.

I'm the dealer in the Pacific Northwest if you have any questions
www.strolzskiboots.com

Performance Ski Shop in Aspen used to sell Strolz. Tom fit my mom many years ago. Don't know if they still carry them.

Thanks.

We'll check with Tim.

Wonder why they don't list their dealers on the Strolz website?

I'd think it would be an easy way to promote the business, and generate walk-in traffic.

Thanks for the info. Aspen's a bit far for us.

Vail would be better.

I've been around Vail a fair bit, and I can't say I've seen any Strolz signs.

This firm seems to favor a low profile.

How do Strolz boots ski?

Awesome. Very direct transmission, thanks no doubt to the great fit.

I guess I got lucky with Surefoot. Boots fit nearly perfectly and I've been skiing them for the past two seasons without any complaints. My wife, on the other hand, has not had a good experience and is at the point of refusing to go back for any more fittings. She's been to both the Deer Valley and Vail locations and has been through most of the fitters at both locations. Only the last fitter seemed to improve the fit. Problem is she can't get her money back and feels it's rediculous to spend another $1200 to try another boot fitter. We'll be in DV in Feb, maybe I should have her go to Strolz but I think she's over sitting in boot shops.

I thought that surefoot had a money back gurantee? why won't they honor it for your wife?

I believe Gorsuch in Vail Village is a Strolz dealer (or at least they were in 2007. I haven.t been in there in a while)

Surefoot's money back guarantee is a scam; they simply refuse to honor it.

i have skiied stroltz boots from 2001 until the beginning of this season. the fit was amazing... but since moving to colorado the foam was just too damn cold, so i switched to a boot with an intuition liner and am happy as can be.

not sure if the surefoot foam is the same stuff, but my wife who also has stroltz boots is now looking for another boot due to the cold issue. she also has issues getting stroltz boots on and off... the great fit comes with a downside.

just wanted to mention this to you since you live in colorado, where it is much colder and this downside can come into play.

fyi, all fittings were done at the stroltz shop in lech.

Cold could be a factor.

 

It's never bothered me in my Surefoot liners.  But, my wife is more sensitive to cold, and she doesn't suffer in silence.

 

I can't imagine the foam in Strolz and Surefoot are much different.

 

This could be a reason to consider the Daleboot, as mentioned by ASCHICK.

 

 

Surefoot products seem very decent though spendy.  Both my wife and I obtained surefoot alpine boots, Lange-Surefoot shells-liners with heaters two seasons ago.  My left boot and her right boot were perfect from the beginning.  The second boots required some customization 2 or 4 times over the next month or so to get optimal fit for comfort and technique.  We haven't required any additional adjustments in 1.5 seasons and that is while skiing 70 and 51 partial days over the last two seasons at Steamboat.  My wife has bilateral bunions and previously never could ski the first two hours of the day without severe cramping.  The heaters don't warm greatly but keep your feet from getting cold enough to cause discomfort even on a two foot powder day when still only wearing thin, single Smartwool ski socks.  I never unbuckle my boots going up the lift and if I stop to rehydrate or get a bite to eat I never unbuckle the boots even if we've been skiing powder, bumps or hard snow (never quite like the concrete that I skied in the Sierras as a kid).  Correct personnel and having an experienced fitter, like Tim the manager at the Steamboat Springs shop, is key.  My Surefoot insoles in my Crispi Tele boots have made comfort Tele skiing possible for me. 

 

Right now I believe that we got what we paid for though the idea of a custom shell makes sense for someone like my wife.

one thing which may be an option and cost a lot less than either of the options discussed is finding a really good boot fitter and having them fit a boot for your wife, strolz is a good [if somewhat old style looking] option if you want a shell specifiaclly for your foot width and you want it in black black or black but if you look at what a boot fitter does they select a shell from a range of boots narrow ones medium ones wide ones high inspet, low instep wide heel narrow heel etc etc.  if the shell is correct then the need for a foam liner may be reduced, ..... a good fitter should be able to take the closest shell to her foot and make some modifications to that shell, the liner is then just the interface between the foot and the shell, often foam is used where the shell selection is not right, it is the correct liner for some but not all. you mentioned that she is sensitive to the cold, foam would not be my first choice for a client presenting with this type of problem

 

how much skiing does she do in a season? does she ski hard? what sort of level does she ski at? these are all things which may need to be considered, for a warmer liner then prehaps the intuition, i she suffers from not being able to get a boot tight around the heel then prehaps a zip fit liner, both are more forgiving than the foam and warmer.....

 

the list of fitters at the top of the boot guys forum should give you a good fitter in or around your area, spend time with that fitter and get your wife the best boots she has ever had, buying into a system may be the right thing to do on the other hand it might not be.

 

good luck

I feel like I at least ought to present this view. I had a pair of Strolz boots made about 5 years ago. I had made the decision that it was time to give up a plug race boot, and approaching age 50, decided on Strolz. The guys who fitted the boots knew what they were doing. I had a lot of input. As others noted, the liners in particular are incredible. The boots fit perfectly, and they were warm. I had a new cork footbed built, which hardly needed any tweaking. The only thing that "bothered" me was the sheer size and volume of the boots. They looked big to me. BSL was quite a bit longer, as well. Bottom line was that I could never ski them. I never liked the stance they put me in, nor the flex. They didn't work, for me. I tried hard to get them dialed in {a lot of tweaking}, after a $1200 investment. I ended up back in a Dobermann , and when I watch races I'm in a Nordica coaches boot. I know some very,very good skiers who love the Strolz. I know others, like me, who really admired the quality, workmanship and process but could not ski them as they liked in the end. Of course, I've run into them after I made my purchase. I'm not sure what I'd advise people considering them. It may depend on your technique, what you've been used to, etc. Dunno. 95%+ of their skiers seem to adore the boots.

Lived in southern Germany for 6 years and spent a lot of time skiing at Lech & St. Anton, the "HOME" of Strolz.  Although I never owned a pair I know a lot of people who did, mostly with difficult feet.  Every one of them loved their boots & I'm not talking about blue skiers, one was a ski instructor in Austria and the others were all expert.  Anyway, if you can get to Lech, Austria I would highly recomend Strolz, it is truly a custom fitted boot. 

Go to Gorsuch Ltd. in Vail Village. I was really impressed with the boot guy there (Billy?).
They ski like a dream...can't find anything neg to say yet. they are worth every penny and then some!