Zellerfeld’s new Nike shoe has sold out, and that tells us something about the future of 3D-printed footwear.
Zellerfeld is a unique company that produces fully 3D-printed shoes. No, they are not printing just a midsole, like some other manufacturers are doing. Here, the company is printing the entire shoe, less laces if the design requires them.
They have quite a selection of shoes on their website, many with radical futuristic designs. All are 3D-printed at the company’s growing farm of FFF 3D printers.
Recently, they launched a new product, the Nike Air Max 1000. This is a new shoe model, designed using computational tools, but it does echo Nike’s earlier Air Max 1 product from 1987 as a historic tie-in. The idea is to demonstrate how shoe technology has advanced in the past 38 years.
The shoe was launched on August 19th at a price of US$179, and was sold out immediately. Limited quantities were available, likely meaning that the capacity of Zellerfeld’s print farm was able to produce only a certain number of units within a reasonable delivery time.
The fact that the Nike Air Max 1000, produced with Zellerfeld’s printing platform, sold out immediately shows that sneaker culture and mainstream buyers are ready to accept 3D-printed shoes — not just as a novelty but as a legitimate product.
This could be a significant milestone in manufacturing: Zellerfeld’s manufacturing line is basically a print farm, without molds, tooling, or other mass-manufacturing overhead. They can literally print a new product design anytime they want by slicing and dispatching another print job. The design-to-market timeframe just got severely compressed, as many physical constraints just disappear using Zellerfeld’s manufacturing model.
The instant sell-out might trigger Zellerfeld to consider a significant expansion of manufacturing capacity, since the concept of fully 3D-printed consumer products appears to be validated.
This may also trigger a provider like Nike to more fully leverage the capabilities of 3D print technology. For example, they might dramatically increase the amount of customization in each shoe, which is easily possible with 3D printing. Online ordering platforms could present dozens of selectable microvariations that could create an “infinite SKUs” scenario.
What looks like a big product sale might be the beginning of something far larger.
Via Zellerfeld
