In this video, Will Lasry shares his long‑standing dream of making shoes and documents the full journey of creating the "2 Mile" sneaker in northern Portugal’s Falgueiras region, known as the Shoe Valley. He explains how he partnered with Diogo of Advan Studios in 2023, leveraging the studio’s flexibility to work with Vibram outsoles. The development process began with five vastly different outsole concepts, leading to a first prototype that suffered from wobble and communication gaps. A second prototype introduced material upgrades—switching straps from pure nylon to a cotton‑nylon blend, adding zig‑zag stitching and clean binding tape—resulting in a much cleaner finish and improved wearability. Will praises the factory’s execution, noting the immaculate stitching and proactive communication as signs of a high‑quality partner. He concludes by inviting viewers to give feedback on the design and indicating that further production will depend on audience response.
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Making a pair of shoes has been a dream of mine since I'm a kid, and I want to show you the factory I used and the whole process of bringing these shoes to life. Our journey begins in northern Portugal in a small region called Falgueiras, which accounts for more than 30 million pairs of shoes, often being referred to as the Shoe Valley because it accounts for more than half of the country's footwear production. Back in 2023, I connected with Diogo from Advan Studios, and together we started on the long journey of developing a pair of sneakers. We had this idea to develop the 2 Mile shoe, a sneaker that's kind of a hybrid used for quick errands and trips to the grocery store. So my friend Danny and I got on a call and we started developing what was the base of the 2 Mile shoe. The first designs he pitched me had these 5 drastically different outsoles. One hard restraint is that we wanted to work with Vibram outsoles, and ADVANCE was extremely accommodating of that, actually allowing us to cycle through multiple pairs of Vibram outsoles just to get to the samples we were looking So this was the first sample, very high degree of execution for a first sample. I have to say, like the first sample is usually a letdown because we're still figuring out communication. Things aren't entirely clear. Not a bad first sample at all. Definitely some changes to make because when we started wearing them, they were wobbling a little bit too much and they weren't wearable in the long term. Eventually we moved on to these, which was the second sample, quite a bit different. All black. A lot of changes made. We changed the straps. The straps went from being nylon to a cotton nylon blend, and we added zigzag stitch throughout the top and the bottom. Much cleaner finish. Cotton nylon binding tape over here. You could see that around the corners, the sewing job is incredibly clean and the binding job is incredibly clean. And this is something I didn't communicate. They just did, which is a sign of a good factory. And then overall, you know, the shoes came to life nicely. Making these was much easier than I anticipated. Which was a really nice experience. Big shout out to Advan Studios. Go check them out, make yourself a pair of sneakers, and let me know if I should produce these. I don't know if you guys like them or not, but would be very curious to hear.
