Designing the Sneaker of the Future
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Have you have been for a run lately? Or maybe just a stroll down the street? Did you notice what shoes people were wearing? Maybe you saw a relatively simple sneaker with a rather elaborate soul hits, bizarre, almost alien, defined by halo of holiday cubes.

This peculiar soul dub cloud tech has been the defining characteristic of the federate running shoes produced by on a zui c based foot are company, which launched to twenty ten. Unlike the solid foundation of traditional running shoes on soul has sizeable, almost ungainly gaps between each cube. IT sort of looks like a mouth and dire native braces.

Athletes and tech brows alike seem to be sporting the stealthy statement sneaker and well on doesn't have the market share of nike data or new baLance. The company, which makes a paralo as well as their signature running shoes, is currently worth around ten point four billion dollars. If you ask on cofounder David alon, part of the secret to that success is constant innovation and an eye on how to design for the future.

It's not really not going back to the past and dark cave, but it's about going to the future. And so it's an interesting moment that also a lot of classic fashion brands and luxury brands have to look to the future, basically say, hi, how do we do this? How do we not go back to all the archive, but how do we look at innovation from the .

wall street journal? This is the future of everything. I'm Jacob algar to be chase men's fashion colonist. And today we're bringing in my interview with on cofounder David aloma. I talked to him about the future of the winning shoe, how it's made, what IT looks like and what that means for the future of athletic shoe design. Stay with us.

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I chatted with David alamo d while he was at home in switzerland land. We talked about the past president in future of on sneaker engineering. Yet take me back. Imagine the listener is not one of the enlightened view that has seen your shoes. What does cloud tech look like and .

feel like cloud tech is our unique engineer technology. And so if you picture a running show out, so Normally it's just a lab, but we drilled holes into that form, actually be engineer holes into that form. So IT was a little bit more demanding.

And these holes have an advantage. When you land, they close and give you incredible question. Then when you have land that they become firm, compressed and so you have an explosive push platform to push off from. So the result is that you can have very soft landing, but then explosive push us. I'm wondering .

you've mentioned this kind of athlete feedback component as a real core component to the design process. How does that work? Are you just giving these shoes out to people and then they're coming back to you? Are they in lab? Like what what does that look like?

So it's engineer in the very origin of on my co founder, oliva is, uh, try long banner to long girl champion. And so we started out we didn't have a lot of means of production or or lapse and but we had a big idea. And so we went out to actually the mountains and uh created in a carpentry workshop twenty prototypes.

We came out with three monsters, as we call them, the most promising prototypes. They were immediately tested. And so that LED to very fast results and fast innovation.

What were those projects made out if you were making them by hand?

Actually, it's funny. dead. You are asking at the first prototype that only we did was made out of a garden hose, so he had shaved off an existing running shoe, and then he thought about, how can I make this hollow elements that today we call clouds? How can I make them? And he looked at his garden hose, cut, IT and glued the cartoon hose piece underneath to shoot.

And that was the first prototype. But when we tested them, they of course broke. And h, so we had to find other means to drill a hole into advanced forms and test out they're expressed.

as guys say, about how long did that garden home shoe last.

you know, in my case, proba hundred meters. But i'm not perfect runner. So so for all E, B, A, probably who he could dance a little bit more on these clouds, and so they lasts longer.

Tell me, what shows are you wearing today?

I'm wearing the cloud till, which is our news tradition is based on an hour cloud tech face platform, which is a new innovation.

How many iterations of cloud tech are you up to now?

So this is the six iteration of cloud tex. So in uh short twelve fears, every second year, we came with version of the technology. And some of these versions actually exist in parallel because some of them are Better geared towards high performance running for our athletes like keno berry who want the new ork marathon and the boast marathon in the same year last year. Others are very much made for everyday life. Snickers take me through .

the development of that shoe, and kind of described to me.

he did iteration after iteration, because performance is always about innovation. And when IT came to the lost iteration of our technology, which we call cloud tech face, is that how can we do something that is even smoothly than the cloud that we already have? And we turn to machine learning to.

if that right. But by machine learning here you're talking about finite element analysis or or fa, which is actually a simulation method, right? But essentially, computers go through a lot of automated cycles to find an optimal solution. Walk me through a little bit more how you use fa in the design process.

So it's not just a material play where you put a Better mattress on the east, your food, you basically gave a computer a virtual foot and a virtual true, and tell the computer, please do one hundred thousand and million iterations on how exactly we have to form these holes and place these holes to turn that into the perfect experience. And that's exactly of the computer for us and out of that came out tic face okay.

with how long does that process take?

You know if you would do that um in our experimental lab, tune all dishes and drill the whole thing, you would probably be thousands of years. But the computer can do that, of course, very, very fast. And so within a few days, we had five different versions of this technology. And then return, of course, to our test runners and to our athletes and test IT out what is the best situation of IT.

So what parameters did you give that programme to kind of find that perfect .

soul for IT was from the very beginning a unique assignment. We felt hey, if um you look at running shoes and at outsold of the past, there was always this coroner. So either you're very cushion and then you can't be very fast, or you very fast, but then you're running on the racing flat.

And so our technology has always been about soft landing, but then explosive push ups. S, and so these were the standard parameter, is that we gave the computer as well. But on top of that, we said also, hey, in the whole transition phase, how can this be super, super strong? And so our clouds, as we call the holes in the outside, have to close and open in a very, very smooth form.

And that's what you optimistic for. But to human curation process, into human design process, is still very, very valid to make IT unique. At the end, generative A I is taking the best and bring together what already exists. But of course, as an innovation brand, you wanna jump head and create what doesn't exist yet. All of me told me .

that on is constantly trying to engineer issue that helps its runners perform Better. But how does the company baLance performance in design when we come back the future of sneaker fashion according to on.

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my ah help. Luckily.

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Some curious, when we're thinking about the speaker, we're thinking about the running shoe in the future, what is that going to look like for you all?

So if I I have to look into the Crystal ball, I see sneaker that is much more intelligent in how IT works with engineering and how use IT to have vitalities. And I also see that IT will probably and be more reduced because there's thetis of sustainability will demand that in terms of how use color and in terms of how it's possible to take certain parts apart for the recycling process. And that is actually mutually beneficial between performance and sustainability.

Would you say intelligent? You're talking intelligent in terms of almost function and practicality. Yes.

intelligent design.

Explain to me what what is the authentic s sustainability?

Our goal is to work towards circular future. So we have to make sure that views a lot of recycled content. Uh, we have to make sure a sure even if it's with highly recycled content, not just adding in your bin, but coming back to be recycled again or even kind of being used to create next products out of IT.

And so to do that, the static of the shoe changes as well. So for example, if fuse r cycled materials and sometimes you don't have colors on the shoe or you want to make sure that the shoe is White so that you can do a next situation, and IT still light or IT comes out in the next situation with a little bit of grade. So we launched the whole collection that has been called on that.

So we didn't use color on the shoe. And the best exam, please, probably the cloud neo. The cloud neo is a performance true that is made from bio base material. So it's actually made out of beans. So we don't use petrol chemicals to create that.

You i'd like to go back to the materials that you said make up the cloud neo. It's it's over fifty percent bio based materials, but i'm a little focused on the beans. How durable is that material in the athletic show?

It's very durable because you break these beans, this no being down to the components that can create the material, extend the basic chemical components. So it's comparable to ribble like authors.

So you are really, in over a decade, changed what a running shoe looks like in a lot of ways. You know when you run on the track here in new york, you see a lot of shoes now that don't look anything like you did a decade ago. And there on is what might the next ten years hold for us in terms of, you know, were talking in twenty thirty four, how is our running experience going to change to our foot? Are I feel .

very trusting, the beginning of sports being continue uniform. So also, if you look at and how people live their lives, it's much more about movement and and exploration. And uh, we experienced that liberation that has happened in the last years.

And so we see that sports skill really is the new archive. And we will see sports skill. You're permit your useful life.

We talked a lot about sports, and I promise I will not help on this point. But I have to ask, we've spoken about this before, the journals written about IT before. But you know, the tech brows, they love, they love the shoes, they love the on show. Is that still going on? You will still see that .

if you just think back over the last four years, we feel that sports is the new lifestyle, is the new luxury because and we have been, in a certain extent, liberated. We have learned how we can work from home. We have learned how we can basically combine work and and sports and experience together in our weeks. And so sports has become the new uniform.

That mention of luxury I I wanted to touch upon, and you all have taken kind of a different tact than a lot of sneaker companies that have been very broad with their collaborations reaching out to you a ton of athletes, a ton of fashion brands, a ton of personalities, rappers and and actors.

And what have you? Lowey has really been your core lowest, which is, I should say, for the listener's, a spanish luxury house owned by the LV to that's been your kind of core collaborator until now. Talk me through that partnership a little bit and that thought process of going with them as as a partner.

It's interesting because that the liberation that we just spoke about, and it's almost a little bit remaining cent of 我的 cocoa al did hundred years ago， SHE and SHE basically liberated women from the sett. SHE invented pants for women. So IT was a liberation movement.

And so in this liberation movement, twenty years later, very basically saying, hey, you're not going back to the old archive of fashion that is largely rooted in the military uniform or classic dress and where you have codes and check and later boots and and dresses. And so for us, IT was a very interesting collaboration to am closely work with both teams working together to think about how do you infuse fashion and luxury with the notion of performance. And that's basically what to fortune collaboration.

So what is IT going to take to kind of move the writing shoe forward overall?

You know, we are actually working on a project that three things to shoot up ready from scratch because sometimes upper have been a little bit neglected and more have workers come into outdoors. And I can just reveal it's not a new texts style. It's really three hundred sixty degree innovation that uh will change how a show is engineered to design made, how IT looks, how IT feels and how IT performs. What I can says, it's definitely a manufacturing innovation. And that eyes suggest you keep your eyes open during the lamps.

The future of everything is a production on the wall street journal. This episode was hosted by me, jack gallagher, and produced by charlie garden burg. Thanks for .

listening.

Amazon q business is the new generative A I assistant from A W S, because many tasks can make business slow, as if waiting through mud a help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon q can security understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline task? Now you can some marise quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time.

Q, got this. Learn what amazon q business can do for you at A W S dot com. Slash, learn more.