I recall my father once took my discarded factory made Rockport shoes out of the trash to have the soles repaired by a cobbler in China. From what my father told me, the cobbler claimed he had never seen such high quality shoes. My father thought he was doing me a favor. Unfortunately, I had several pairs of identical shoes in my closet prepared in advance for when the soles wore out.

If he had never seen such high quality shoes, I certainly do not expect him to be able to produce equal quality shoes even if he is able to make a better fit. However, they make enough sizes of shoes that you can approximate the right fit and actually getting the right fit is not significantly different. I have wide feet, which makes getting shoes that fit well difficult since the wide variety is not often shipped to stores and likely has limited production. That is why I had so many duplicates of the same shoe in my closet in the first place. Having found shoes that fit, I do not feel any need for a custom fit.

That said, a custom fit is a very different thing than a claim of being intrinsically better. If we go by what my father claimed the cobbler in China said, the factory made shoes are the better ones (or at least the Rockport ones I wear are).