Warning: this is a rather sily article, but I found it interesting. Sorry that it has absolutely no educational value.

So every hobby or extra activity will always need some equipment, right? If you're a professional ballerina, you could end up having to replace pointe shoes every single day. With ballet, the shoe is what makes the difference. Classical ballet isn't ballet if there are no shoes, just as baseball wouldn't be baseball without a bat. For professionals, the shoes have to be custom-made and tailored to the individual foot, and even after that, must be broken in. The replacement time is really due to the incredibly long workdays that each ballerina goes through (eight hours of straight dancing at minumum). At some companies, there are even special people hired just to act as a ballet shoe consultant to each dancer, and most companies spend at minumum $500,000 on shoes a year, with $67.50/shoe.

I honestly think that this is ridiculous and super wasteful, but I suppose the worth of the shoe is demonstrated in the dancer's skill.