Adidas Will Produce New Sneaker With 3D-Printed Soles

(via sneaker-magazine)

Adidas is attempting to lead with footwear innovation by partnering up with Carbon, a 3D-printing tech start-up company out of Silicon Valley. The collaboration will allow Adidas to produce custom 3D-printed soles for their Futurecraft 4D sneakers.

5,000 sneakers will be produced and released this year and the amount is expected to increase to about 100,000 by 2018. This will make Adidas one of the first to actually use 3D printing for mass production.

Apparently, using 3D printing allows for quicker production of products. So a sneaker that would typically take a month to make will take about 2 hours to produce.

However, will the quicker production time take away from the quality? According to reports, the shoes will still be pretty durable and offer better performance. The long term goal is to eventually be able to give customers the option to “walk into an Adidas store and have a customized sole printed for them while they wait”.

This new way of creating shoes will definitely revolutionize the fashion industry.