Textile Insight

FOOTWEAR | MANUFACTURING Getting Personal 14 • Textile Insight ~ March/April 2018 textileinsight.com The Ability to Tune Shoes to an Individual's Foot & Gait Is Happening Fast. By Jennifer Ernst Beaudry he real story about why Superfeet has launched an entirely new manufacturing cycle — one that includes an attention-grabbing partnership with Brooks Running to create fully custom running shoes here in the U.S. and a brand new factory model, Flowbuilt, to do it in — isn't about technology, the brand says. The real driver, according to Superfeet FitStation project manager James Wnorowski, is the deep consumer desire for custom, personalized footwear. And all the innovations that the brand and its partners have launched are just a way to get there. "We recognize that customization is happening — it's not longer a 'when it happens,' it's happening now," he said. "We want to be a part of that evolution, and they want to lead their categories." It's what drove Superfeet to launch FitStation, the first consumer-facing step in the process, last year. The in-store scanning technology captures the size and shape of a per- son's foot, as well as their individual gait, using a scanner and force plate to create a digital profile. Developed in partnership with HP Inc., and RSscan International, FitStation records and converts a person's stroll through a FitStation kiosk into the data it can use to create fully tuned, totally customized 3-D printed insoles. The first stations rolled out to specialty run shops last summer — early adopters included Naperville Running Co. in Naperville, IL; Oklahoma City, OK's Red Coyote; and Grand Rapids, MI-based Gazelle Sports — with more slated in 2018. The potential FitStation has unlocked has been attract- ing attention. At The Running Event trade show in Austin last December, Seattle-based Brooks announced it would be licensing the technology. Using FitStation and incorporating the science from Brooks' own Run Signature biometrics program will let the brand select the right last and build a midsole that's adapted in multiple zones specifically for the runner in its neutral Levitate shoe. "This is the manifestation of our 30-year effort in biome- chanics," said Carson Caprara, director of global footwear product line management at Brooks. "It's runner-focused and it's about personalization, not just about customiza- tion. It's how we can bring Run Signature to life, because of access to this sort of platform. It's been an incredible catalyst for our thinking." The first FitStation Levitates will begin production this summer, and Caprara said the brand is "moving fast" to explore the different paths that the partnership opens. "What we're trying to be the vanguard in is person- alization," he said. "Other people might be focused on automation in a vacuum. But we want to [use this as a tool to] solve for personalization." Superfeet is leveraging the insights, too. Launching this year, the Superfeet ME3D Recovery slides will take the FitStation data and turn it into personalized sandals for after runs. Other brands may be in the mix in future seasons, too. But making the footwear possible required another inno- vation. "As we got further down the road with FitStation we realized there was just wasn't a manufacturing facility that could accomplish what we wanted to accomplish," Superfeet marketing manager Amy Olive said. And that's why the brand decided to make its own. Dubbed Flowbuilt, the manufacturing facility is set to have a ribbon cutting before the end of Q1, with a grand opening scheduled for May. The space, located near Superfeet's Ferndale, WA, offices, houses two multi-sec- tion injection molding machines from DESMA (the German PU injec- tion machine company is the fourth partner in the endeavor) and will employ 20 to 25 people (nine have been hired already) to work on development and design, prototyping and producing custom insoles, slides and shoes. When fully ramped up, Flowbuilt will be able to create 350,000 pairs of footwear in a year. Other changes to speed will be immediate: After the facility opens, the brand projects that the current two-week wait to receive custom footbeds ordered through in-store FitStations will drop to two to three days. Opening Flowbuilt, Olive said, is a research opportunity as much as it is a manufacturing tool. "We'll gain insight into different people's movement patterns, and even their preferences in terms of shape and other factors, she said. "And it lets us advance development and design, with faster turnaround times and prototyping." The brand says its in talks now to expand its FitStation base not just in specialty run but into the outdoor specialty and even comfort and casual world. And it continues to talk to footwear brands about ways the data and the manu- facturing process might be able to create something new. "We really believe the future of consumer products is personalization. If you look around today, it's everywhere: Coffee, our newsfeeds, grocery delivery," Olive said. "And the more and more that it's happening, the more consumers are expecting that from brands. We knew we could be on the forefront of that movement, or somebody else would." O T ROAD SHOW As manufacturers and brands try to parse out the future of footwear man- ufacturing, industry stakeholders have been reevaluating everything: Where do factories need to be? How should they be staffed? What materials are important now? What technologies are going to stick around? Portland, OR-based Keen is one of the firms invested in mapping out that next frontier. As they search for answers, they're taking their show on the road. Last summer, Keen packed up one of the two automotive-industry- inspired robots it christened the Uneekbots and took it on a tour of Tokyo, where the elastic-cord Uneek sandal has a cult streetwear follow- ing. Installed in the city's Harajuku District for three days and later for a day in streetwear shop Beams, the "world's smallest footwear factory," as the brand took to calling it, wove made-to-order shoes as consumers waited — a complete shoe took half an hour, six minutes of which was the actual robotic weaving. This year, the Uneekbot will do a similar tour stateside. The final tour roster hasn't been set, but starting in April, the machine will visit col- lege campuses in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Portland, OR. The idea is to partner with schools with strong fashion and/or engineering and ro- botics programs, to hopefully inspire students. "There's a lot of talk around manu- facturing close to market, or using 3-D printing or 4-D printing," says Ty- ler LaMotte, chief marketing officer, Keen Footwear. "People are talking about bringing the manufacturing as close to the consumer as possible in real time. And with Amazon doing delivery not in two days now but in two hours, well, what's even faster is making the product in front of someone in real time. That speed to market is engaging the consumer. We want to show the students what we can do and engage with them in a different way. We want to say to the design and engineering commu- nity, 'this is what we can do but it's about what you will do.' We want to collaborate with future engineers and designers." O Superfeet's ME3D Recover Slide Brooks is utilizing Superfeet's FitStation technology to personalize and customize running shoes.

• Cover