Better Footwear Manufacturing with Nicoline van Enter

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Fashion Made. Today I have the pleasure to be joined by Nicoline Van Enter. Nicoline, hey!

Hello! Hi, how are you?

I'm good, thank you. How are you?

I'm good.

Excellent. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Today we're going to be talking about something really interesting because I've spoken to a lot of people over the last 6 months of doing this and there always seems to be one particular focus. And, um, from what I understand it, one of the key things that you do is kind of bring all of these different focuses together.

Exactly. That's what we do. I am the founder of an organization called The Footwearists. We are an innovation platform for the footwear industry. We're essentially a network of really experienced, um, footwear consultants and trainers, teachers. And the main thing we do actually is help companies make sense of all the different technologies that are out there and help them understand what the purpose could be for them of all these different technologies. Why do you want to innovate and how can you combine all these different things together into a logical strategy for the future that is easy to apply and can actually make you reach your goals in the best way possible. And a lot of times we do that by connecting different parties across the supply chain, so ranging from material suppliers and machine manufacturers, software developers and other tech suppliers, to brands and retailers to really create full concepts.

Okay, fantastic, because there's a lot of technologies out there, there's a lot to choose from today.

Definitely, for sure, and I think a lot of people are also quite overwhelmed. And often in companies, the efforts that they make towards innovation are very siloed, so design Design has their purpose of making stuff digital, and then there's manufacturing that has their purpose of automation, and then there's retail who feel that they need to have more entertainment and virtual reality and other applications to bring people back into store. Then there's the sustainability department that a lot of times is focusing on completely new materials that, in my opinion, might not always connect best to existing manufacturing and waste management processes. There's actually a lot of different things to match up and that also makes it difficult, but at the same time, very exciting. And, uh, in our experience, a lot of times companies really overlook, um, the low-hanging fruits, uh, for innovation while they're focusing on the latest of the latest of technology.

Yeah. I guess there's probably loads of specific ways that you help each individual company, but are there some general ideas that you can apply here?

Yeah, generally. Um, we start from, manufacturing, because as much as we do things digitally, it almost becomes like making full digital products. In the end, we're still trying to deliver a physical product to the customer. So in our opinion, starting from manufacturing is still the main thing and is also still the best way to prevent a lot of problems and issues with implementation of innovation further down the line. So for instance, if you look at manufacturing now, the main focus is on speeding things up. How can we do things in an automated way that make production even quicker? And first of all, it seems that a lot of people are not even really aware of what that means. I remember a few weeks ago I was giving a lecture at a retail technology seminar, and I was about to show a video of a smart manufacturing facility from China, one of the companies that we work with. And they have a smart factory, fully automated, that they are potentially now putting in stores, to do production in stores. So I was asking the audience, well, so if you have all the different parts of a shoe, how long do you think it will take that factory to assemble the shoe? And the answers were very different, ranging from an hour to one week, where I was like, okay, these people clearly have never been to a factory. And the audience did include people who are actually fashion buyers and footwear buyers. So even though, you know, they were not all footwear people, apparently they didn't have so much idea of manufacturing. Because I showed the video and I was like, well, actually, in this video they're doing assembly in 24 seconds. And people were basically falling off their chairs. And this is a particularly fast example, but in general, the whole focus is on faster, faster, faster. I was at the DESMA House Fair in September where Christian Decker, their CEO, was talking about how they are now aiming for assembly in under 1 minute. Now, if you do that, you of course have to have a design system that matches up with that. And at the same time, we find a lot of companies focusing on changing from 2D to 3D, and at that point introducing 3D design strategies that are, especially in the beginning, way more laborious and actually take more time. Not just in training, but also in actually making the design. So you have to be really smart on how you combine those things and think about how can I prevent the company from doing things double. You know, why would I redesign the sole that has already been molded once by a factory? So the factory should have those files, you know. So I'm often like, well, first of all, go look at your manufacturing facilities and negotiate with them that you can get all the 3D files that they already have and start from there so that people might only need to adjust uppers. Think about how in the future you can do generative design in a smart way, because it's difficult generally across the board. We find that companies find it difficult to get the right people to do— to apply actually new technologies. So I've had companies that have employed gaming designers to visualize footwear, and that's fine as long as they're visualizing, but due to time pressure they got to designing. But then you have people who are great with 3D software but have absolutely no clue of footwear, and essentially results in designs that you cannot manufacture. So that's usually why we start from the manufacturing realm, look at what happens in the factory, look at how shoes are now assembled in a very different way from how most designers have been taught that they are assembled, and implement that in your, in your digital design strategy as well. And also in your strategy for sustainability.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to go on there. I guess I'm interested in generative design, certainly for footwear soles. Seems to be quite an interesting area right now. Are a lot of people working on that? Is it happening anywhere beyond medical applications?

Yes and no. So when it comes— the people who are mainly working on it are the software suppliers. So the software developers. Frankly, I still think that there are a lot of misconceptions from the design side about what generative design really means. I remember one of my customers had an internal presentation recently about generative design, and one of the designers, design leaders who was showing up, said, "Oh, I'm looking forward to the meeting this afternoon, and I'm looking forward to hearing how soon I'll lose my job." So people are quite scared of computers taking over their work, and I personally don't think that that's necessarily the case. However, yes, their job will be very different. Now, another thing, for instance, you mentioned how generative might be interesting for soles. I personally disagree with that for the moment. The reason why I disagree with that is that if you want to do it that way, it has to go hand in hand with new methods of manufacturing. So I see a lot of companies also, and I think it's a mistake, seeing generative design as only creating, you know, complex lattice structures. And that's only one small part of generative design. Generative design essentially means, in my opinion, optimizing your design system using computer technology. And part of that can be creating really complex lattice structures. We know a lot about that because we are quite specialized in 3D printing. But because of that, we also know that 3D printing in general, within the current mass manufacturing system, is not working yet, so not as a business model. So you can do it for sure, yes, and we have also, I think we are the first company to have made, you know, have printed fully wearable soles and uppers, together with also Feats in San Diego. But it requires a different business model, and I think that the larger companies at this moment don't really have that in place. We do however work now with technology that could make the molding process easier, that could actually make it possible to make molds for a lower price. And that's also interesting. But then again, in our opinion, more, faster, and newer is not always the best solution for everybody. And especially when it comes to sustainability side. So, one of the things that I'm hoping, especially from the generative side, what it can do is to help designers solve sustainability issues. That's where I think we have a much larger opportunity when it comes to generative design. So, say that I'm designing a shoe, I would like my system to predict with every decision that I take what the sustainability consequences of that would be. So oftentimes, since manufacturing is so far removed from where design happens, designers are not always aware that literally every line they put on, whether it's paper or in the computer, every line that they put there has consequences for manufacturing. There's a whole apparatus of machinery and materials and raw resources that is set in motion with every decision that you take. And that's one of the other reasons why we like starting from manufacturing, because one of the things that I think is overlooked a lot of times is what companies already have. When I look at the focus for sustainability, a lot of times I find companies focusing on creating new types of materials that, for instance, are not petroleum-based, you know, with algae-based, sugarcane. As such, those initiatives are interesting, they're good, However, it overlooks the fact that the most basic principle when it comes to determining life cycle is what you already have, the products that you already have, those are the ones that have the smallest footprint. Now, when a company works with a factory to do a production run, after the shoes have been produced, generally they don't require the factory to tell them, and they don't administer that. How much material is still left. Even though the factories all work with margins, of course, they always have extra material if something goes wrong in production that they can still finish that run. So if you go to factories, you'll be surprised a lot of times how much is left still in storage, and nobody looks at it, and it doesn't show up anymore in the books of any company. So designers are also not confronted with that. They're not required to first look at What do we still have before they start making new stuff? And especially if you go for, you know, limited edition collaborations, this is really an opportunity that I think is overlooked. So what if my system, you know, would suggest to me, "Hey, this is a shoe you want to make, but you still have these materials left in stock. This is the quantity. This is how much you could make with that." I honestly feel that that would be A, much more sustainable, and B, would save a lot of cost as well. So it's a win-win situation.

I think you showed me an example of that. Was it something that Timberland did?

Yes. Well, one of the things that we've been working for Timberland for quite some time and I've always suggested to them, please have your designers visit the factory more, do your design kickoffs in the factory. And this season they started with a concept together with Daniel Bailey of Concept Kicks. It's a concept called Construct 10061 where they take their classic Timberland boot, they took a couple of designers to their design facility, to their factory in the Dominican Republic, and they essentially gave them the factory for a week. And they were like, please redesign the boots with what you have. And as a result, what you see are really the most interesting takes on how to manufacture the boots with the current facilities in the factory whilst using their own waste material, also including cutting waste. So I think this is a great example of how you could make something that is more creative, that is more sustainable, that saves cost, and at the same time is great for marketing. Because they filmed the whole exercise. People can now vote for their favorite concepts, and then those shoes might be translated into a more commercial version that can be produced in larger quantities. So in that case, you also don't have to tell people really complicated stories about why your shoe is sustainable or is well made. People simply look at the process, see it, enjoy it, and that as such is the marketing. So I personally feel that the focus on manufacturing could be the new marketing.

Yeah. You know, I really like that phrase. And I completely agree. I'm just looking at it now. And actually, there's some really cool, cool designs in there. And then I scroll through to the bottom, I see a good friend, old Christopher Rayburn at the bottom, who they've obviously just announced as their creative director, which I think is a very strong move on their part.

Yeah, yeah. It's also a conscious decision, of course, to take somebody like him with a big focus on sustainability and he's also pushing that agenda. And I think as we move forward we will see more things like that from them. I think it's an inspiring example for a lot of companies to show what can happen when you actually do take your designers into the factory and design from there. We give a course that is called Design for Manufacturing, which we do in China at factories, and it's amazing the creative results you get from it that are also really very much producible. But then again, a lot of times when we suggest it to companies, "Do you want to send your designers?" They're like, "Can you do it in our office?" I'm like, "Well, I understand it from time constraints, but then again, I feel that's a pennywise and pound-foolish solution, because yes, of course I can come to your office and I can show it to you with video, but it's not the same thing as actually doing it in the factory." And basically after that week, you could have at least half if not more of your collection ready and actually using things that you already have and that you might not have used in that way before. So I still really think that that's the best way to do it. I've led design retreats for companies for a long time and I was always surprised at how they always wanted to go to some chic resort in a hip big city rather than say, hey, let's go into the factory and see see if we can play around with, with what's here and with the, with the way the machines work.

Yeah, but it, but it helps them be better designers as well when you understand every facet of the process. When you see it with your own eyes, it helps inform your design, and better informed design is better design.

Absolutely. And also what, what it helps designers with is to realize that the biggest amount of waste and pollution takes place within the industry. So A lot of times when we talk about initiatives for sustainability, it's about post-consumer waste, not so much about industrial waste, even though if you would go to factories, you would be shocked at how much waste there is in the process. And they can design shoes in a much better way to work around that, or even help with creating better processes as such that prevent the waste in the first place. So I have always had very good, good results with that.

Yeah, it's another thing, because obviously the shoes themselves, I mean, obviously the industry has to take a responsibility for waste as a whole. When you look at the consumer side of it and look at footwear specifically, it's not that easy to recycle a shoe.

No, it certainly isn't. So I think one of the big, biggest, basically misconceptions that we, that we have at the moment is how shoes are treated in the waste stream. So for instance, I get a lot of people, companies, and students to me who are like, "Oh, I want to do design for disassembly." That's all really nice, but your shoes are not being disassembled at all in the current waste system. So if you want to do that, it's no use unless you develop your own system for disassembly. When shoes enter into the waste stream, either they go into landfill Or they get incinerated, so burned. So ideally you want something to burn quickly, give you a lot of energy and no toxic residues or fumes. Or if they're recycled, they're ground up into a granulate or a powder. And then the material is separated like in a big centrifuge based upon density. So that process is really the type of disassembly that is happening. So when you look at it that way, I would much rather see more initiatives in the realm of how can we make mono-material shoes. So for instance, we now see a lot of shoes with knitted uppers, a lot of them polyester-based yarns. Why can we not say, okay, we take one type of chemical compound that can be turned into a yarn and can also be a sole compound, and with that we make a shoe that doesn't look like it's mono-material, but chemically is basically one material and is much easier to recycle. And those are a lot of things that you don't think about unless you actually go see how shoes are handled in the waste stream. So next May we're organizing a new training in Germany where we actually visit a lot of different waste management facilities for incineration, recycling, biodegradation, to really make people understand how does that work. Because especially for instance when it comes to biodegradation, I think a lot of people do not understand the difference between bio-based and biodegradable. So if we look at all the new EVA materials that have sugarcane or algae in them, those are great in terms of, you know, omitting petroleum, but it doesn't mean that they are actually biodegradable. And at this moment, if you would have those materials mixed with the petroleum-based materials, that actually makes it more difficult to recycle. So that's another issue that even though you're trying to do a really good thing, in the end of life it might actually result more in a problem. And the same thing with making things biodegradable. Well, lots of things are biodegradable, but depends on how long it takes to biodegrade them, right?

Yeah.

So I hear it a lot. I do a lot of printing. I hear that all the time. But this 'PLA.' I was like, that still can take hundreds of years to biodegrade depending on how it is made. So generally in industrial composting facilities, for instance, that usually takes about 8 to 16 weeks. Because of course those facilities can also not take forever, you know, that's also a commercial business. So any materials that don't fully biodegrade within those 8 to 16 weeks are still incinerated. So the footwear materials that we currently use, none of them degrade this fast, and you don't want them to degrade this fast because they would start degrading on your feet while you wear the shoes. So it's more complicated than that, and essentially that's why you would rather choose options that keep the material alive, keep it used longer before you eventually end up in a biodegradation system. So it's another thing that we invite— advise companies in on how to do that.

Okay, fantastic. So we have the sustainability aspect there. We've obviously talked about the design side of things, you know, 2D and 3D design, and then informing designers to make better designs, and that being a pathway to sustainability. I guess there's a couple of other things. There's inside the factory and the technologies that are helping that side of things move forward into the next step? And I guess the first thing that comes to my mind, perhaps I'm wrong, would be automation.

Yeah, the first thing definitely is automation. I can't think of— but then again, so what does that, what does that mean, right? So I find what I, when I look at the effects of automation, what I'm very excited about is that this is actually for the first time in, in shoe history, really transforming how shoes are made. Because when we went from manually making shoes to the first industrial revolution, you still essentially had the exact same process of how a shoe was made. You would just add machinery to it. Now with automation, we have to think about it in another way. So it's not about saying, "Okay, here's how we make shoes and now we can have a robot replicate that process." No, it goes the other way around. This is a robot, it can do this but not that. So how can that robot create a shoe? And that has led to concepts like, for instance, the knitting, you know, all the knitted uppers that we have now, that people think it's mainly from fashion reasons. Actually, no, that stems purely from automation reasons. So where you can have a huge factory with lots of knitting machines and fairly few people who need to monitor them. Now, I think what is a misconception there is that people think that because of this automation that you need all kinds of really highly advanced, very expensive machinery, and I don't think that's the case. What is interesting is that automation has led to a way of footwear construction that is actually way more simple than we did before, that you could also actually replicate with much more simple machines. So even for smaller brands and smaller designers, it becomes doable, especially when it comes to sneakers. To make sneakers the way you would see them in store, but potentially do that in a much smaller setting. But again, since most people don't see how shoe manufacturing is done, they don't realize that. I'm now working with a podiatrist who is adjusting sneakers for top athletes, and I took her to China to show her how those sneakers are made so that she could actually basically buy the parts and in a very simple simple assembly system, still add different, not just orthotics, but different parts inside the soles that will create different densities in different places. She, as just a one-person company, now has the opportunity to adjust industrially made sneakers for the athletes that she works with. And she's not the only one. So that's what I find very, very exciting. Yes, it works for mass manufacturing, for sure, But if you look through all the different robots, and especially the pick-and-place robots that are used, I mean, some of these things you can simply do by hand. And then, okay, it won't take you 1 minute, it will take you 5 minutes. Okay, great, that's still really fast.

Yeah, so pretty good.

Yeah, still pretty good. So that's also, you know, what I like to make people understand. Look at how those shoes are assembled now. And then another thing which I would like to address there, which is when we talk about retail in this perspective, we see that a lot of the machine manufacturers eventually have the purpose of producing stuff in store. The Chinese customer I mentioned earlier who does the 24-second assembly system, they are actually already starting in stores in China. Now, I think the misconception there is that manufacturers always think that Faster is better. But I think, what if you come into that store and you see those shoes indeed in 24 seconds, boom boom, being made, how much are you willing to spend on them? Or is that the fast food of footwear basically? So another thing that we're working on more on the retail technology side is, okay, fantastic, let's make stuff in store, it will bring entertainment back, you can do stuff custom-made, whether it's to you know, aesthetically or to size or both. But how can we make that entertaining? And definitely, in my opinion, that will require more than simply showing the process. I think actually eventually it might be that we would rather not show the process, because I doubt whether all the different people, you know, sneaker lovers, when they actually see it, whether they would like that. I had, for instance, that response at the Retail Technology conference, when I showed the video of how the shoes are assembled, then there were some young guys in the audience, sneaker lovers, who were like, "But that's junk!" And I was like, "But that's how your sneakers are assembled as well, that you're wearing." So they were very disillusioned. So it's going to be interesting, you know, it's great that we can do it this fast. Is it going to make people really want the stuff? Is it going to Does that make people see the shoes as high value? Not sure. So that's another thing that we're working on. Yeah.

Does it have that effect of, you know, if you went to a really nice restaurant and you ordered, you know, a $30, €30, £30 steak and, uh, they brought it out a minute later, what would you think?

Yeah, exactly. It's almost like hearing this ding from the microwave, you know, that generally doesn't mean that it's quality. So exactly, so that is the thing. And but it's, it's the concept that people have now is that no, no, no, but it needs to— you need to deliver it right now and people want to wait for it. And I'm like, I doubt it. I mean, if you ask somebody, would you like to wait for it and present it as a technical possibility, of course they'll say yes. Yeah, but you could also ask if, if it's a fantastic shoe and it's made to your liking, your size, and whatever, How long would you be willing to wait? You know, I think that could be a very different answer. You know, of course, look at all the examples of the Hermès bag, you know, that they— of course they could make more of them, but they, they, you know, intentionally kept the waiting list to give people a sense of exclusivity when they bought something.

So yeah, you know, this interestingly, I guess, ties into the final piece of the puzzle, which is really the marketing side of things, you know, the stories that are being told and how you balance between, uh, what's true and what's a good story, and also what works best as well. Because as we've explored, what is true and that it's both true and a good story, but it might not actually create the best message if you're selling the same pair of trainers for the same price but you're just making them in 24 seconds. So Yeah, how does that come together?

Well, I think I've given several presentations about this, one of my favorite subjects, because I'm— that's again, for instance, looking back at the generative design that we talked about before. Not many people know, for instance, that if you do generative design, a lot of the software that is being used is software from the entertainment industry, for moviemaking, animation, for instance. So you can actually If you think about that on a more strategic level and very creatively, you start seeing opportunities on how to combine entertainment with design. For instance, I always show a video of Geoffrey Mann. It's already several years old. He's a designer from the UK who makes ceramics, and he has a video where he took a scene from the movie American Beauty, and the couple are having an argument, and you see the sound waves go through the tableware, so through the ceramics and through the cutlery. And it's like rippling through. And he can stop that animation at any point, and he actually then produced the tableware with the sound waves in it. And the products as such look beautiful. If you don't know how that was made, you still think it's really interesting aesthetically, like, oh wow, that looks different. But then if you see that little video, you're like, oh wow, that's so cool. So, and there's many different ways that we can start thinking about combining different technologies from different industries to do design in a very, very different way. And I think that's one of the most, I think, underestimated opportunities at this moment, because now instead of just having your innovation siloed within footwear, you also of course have innovation siloed from industry to industry. Ideally, what we want to do is to combine innovations from different industries into entirely new business concepts. I see that happening a lot more in China, where they have a lot more things going on the tech side and focus a lot more on entertainment in stores, since they don't really have much entertainment other than the KTV, and now they're building new entertainment systems into retail. And really what you want to do is to make the creation process of the shoes the story. So, and that is one of the most interesting opportunities. We did a workshop at the Adidas MakerLab with a class of students that we were teaching, and for instance, they looked at the different shoes that Adidas had, and they were like, oh, why don't we take little pieces like a little fastening pieces for the laces, those you can print quite quickly. You go to a concert and you can basically, you know, turn the sound waves of a song into that fastening, and at the end of the concert people could really buy shoes that were basically designed by the concert, by the music, and you could have an app on your phone and you could play that music back, you know, taking a picture of the shoe or something like that. There's a lot more crossover happening in that sense, and it also gives you way more opportunities for interesting types of customization that are, I think, more interesting, that add more emotional value than simply the way we do it now, where you present somebody with a design drawing and say, what color could this be, what color could that be? So yeah, I think there's much more we can do there.

It makes so much sense, you know, if you tie all of these things things in together, you can tell that story, and then you get more user customer engagement. And then those customers tell you what they like, and you feed that data back into the design, and the whole thing is this massive, you know, increasing spiral. Whereas right now, you know, it's kind of four waves just kind of hitting each other randomly. And, you know, we want to create that kind of whirlpool effect where everything ties in really nicely and creates this massive energy.

Yeah, definitely. And that's definitely what we're, what we're doing. And I think, yeah, one of the things that we're aiming to do for the, for this coming year is to really also start some training for companies to train people to be able to do that. Uh, cause I think that's one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to implementing stuff like this, um, that you're essentially requiring completely different, um, ways of thinking and also different skills. Of your design team, not just design, basically any team. So how does that work? How can we make sure that people have those skills and how can we start training people so that when the technology is there, they understand how to implement it? Because I do think that that's still the biggest hurdle. You'd be surprised to know how far a lot of the software already is. I just had this morning a great conversation with the company that is really advanced in basically recognizing any shoe from a picture and translating that into a generative design. But how will a company work with that? Because currently designers are not equipped to understand how to build a generative framework to create a collection in a generative way. That's a very new way of thinking for them, and you have to overcome a lot of fear of what that might mean, and you might need completely different people because this is not about drawing shoes. This is about really creating a process of how a shoe is designed instead of a designer individually drawing product by product. Yeah, it's a very different way of working.

Do you pull lessons from that from other industries?

Um, so much yet, frankly, especially when it comes to the generative design realm. I'm disappointed. I went to, I went to the Formnext show in Frankfurt 2 weeks ago, which is like the the big 3D printing show in Europe, and the whole story about generative was just about creating lattices. And I understand it from a 3D printing perspective because that is what you can do with a printer that you could not do with other methods of manufacturing, but it's a highly limited view of what generative is, and also it creates a specific aesthetic that people might get bored with over very soon. So if you are limited, limiting this thing to a certain aesthetic, I don't think this will work. But indeed, we are really, really in need of people to, to understand that. So I'm— that same thing is happening in other industries as well. So I cannot say that it's bettering cars or bettering clothing. This is essentially new, new to everybody.

Yeah, yeah. And so I guess your courses are going to help people understand understand it a little better.

Hopefully. So we have, at least we're aimed, that's our main aim. We're working on a new course program at this moment that will aim specifically towards that. And in February, upcoming Linea Pelle and Siemak show, we'll have a—

Oh yeah, you guys are there, aren't you?

Yeah, we are there. We have a conference there called Footwearism. It's on February 21st. And there we are actually going to show literally how to connect different innovations from different sectors together into real meaningful innovation concept for footwear. So we're connecting machine manufacturers to material suppliers, to software suppliers, to brands in different scenarios. So we'll have a scenario about how to create better circular footwear, one that's focused very much on sustainability. We have a concept that is very much much about how to do manufacturing either locally or in store and offering a lot of smart customization options. So essentially we wanted to do a conference a bit different than others. Instead of presenting technologies individually, we're connecting them already in actual scenarios to explain to people how to connect them together.

Fantastic, fantastic. So that's in Milan.

Yes, it's going to be in Milan, February 21st.

Great, I'll enjoy that.

And I'll be speaking in Hong Kong at your next PI Innovation Conference as well.

Yes, absolutely. So we're going to be in LA in February and then Hong Kong in April, so looking forward to having you speak for us again there. Nikoline, thank you so much. We've managed to squeeze in the solution to the whole industry in 36 minutes.

I hope so.

You're welcome. Everybody get up!