Adidas Is Testing How To Mass-Produce Custom Shoes Like Those It Makes For Elite Athletes

For everyday shoppers, the big promise of all the technology that’s changing how sneakers are made is that it could ultimately enable brands to offer fast, fairly affordable, truly custom shoes. That is, not just letting you design the color scheme and get your initials stitched on—which plenty of brands already do—but actually get shoes tailored to the individual shapes of your feet, with your performance needs in mind, like brands often make for their pro athletes. The idea is still some time away from becoming reality, but in a lot on the Brooklyn waterfront, Adidas is offering a glimpse of what it could look like. The German sneaker maker opened to the public today (April 26) what it calls the Speedfactory Lab Experience. Speedfactory is the company’s innovative, digitally enabled, highly automated factory, which lets it produce shoes rapidly in smaller batches than it previously ever could, making it feasible for Adidas to make shoes specific to different cities—or one day, it hopes, specific individuals. The whole experience is tied to the launch of the AM4NYC, a running shoe informed by and designed for New York City runners, and one in a series of Speedfactory-made, city-specific shoes it’s releasing. Read more at Quartz.