How Adidas and Carbon are changing the sneaker supply chain

How Adidas and Carbon are changing the sneaker supply chain

By Romain Dillet

While the Adidas Futurecraft 4D shoes are cool looking sneakers, the story behind those shoes is even more interesting. The sportswear company has partnered with Carbon to design a new kind of sneakers.

Behind the Futurecraft 4D, you can find a process that is not that new — 3D printing. Many companies promised an industrial revolution by bringing back factories to service-driven countries, such as the U.S. and European countries. But this partnership between Adidas and Carbon could turn that wild dream into a reality.

“What you saw there was basically this integration of hardware, software and chemistry all coming together to take a digital model, print it very fast, but do it out of the materials that have the properties to be final parts,” Carbon co-founder and CEO Joseph DeSimone told TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino.

And the secret sauce behind Carbon’s process is its cloud-based software tool. You use a primitive CAD, define some mechanical properties and it gets manufactured in front of your eyes.

It’s quite hard to buy Futurecraft 4D shoes right now because production is still extremely limited. Adidas CMO Eric Liedtke is hopeful that it’s going …read more

Source:: TechCrunch Gadgets

Galaxy A6 phone has megapixels galore and sells for $360 on Sept. 14     - CNET Previous post Galaxy A6 phone has megapixels galore and sells for $360 on Sept. 14 - CNET Amazon Fire HD 8 (2016) review: A cheap tablet that's actually good     - CNET Next post Amazon Fire HD 8 (2016) review: A cheap tablet that's actually good - CNET