Taking a Multi Generational Approach to Modern Footwear Design | EQLZ | PI Apparel

How's it going, everybody? Good afternoon, morning, evening, whatever time around. I'm on like my 6th coffee to stay awake here. So coming from the East Coast over here. We wanted to say thank you for starting this out. As you could tell by our titles, we are all independently designing this stuff. And we came together with an opportunity to build a basketball brand that had already launched and existed, but did not launch at the level that we felt was capable. So the three of us came together to help create and take the product to the next level. We're going to start with introductions from each one of us.

Thank you.

So, yeah, again, Aaron Cooper. I've been an industrial designer for about 30-plus years. I came from ArtCenter College of Design. I was actually Nike's first design intern back in '94 and stayed at Nike for 25 years, was at Nike Basketball for the first 10. So some people would say I was part of the most influential, impactful kind of decade of footwear creation. Just happened to be in the right place at the right time, working with the right people. And since then, I've been out of Nike for about 6 years. And I just was telling a friend of mine the other day, I'm now— I realized that I'm working with clients across 7 time zones. Which is super fun. And I like to think that I'm staying on my purpose path, which is around human performance. I have a passion around human performance, not just to create for others, but also to help enable myself. I'm a little bit of a biohacker. But I like to think about inspiring people to pursue their best self, enable them to be able to do that through product services, experiences, coaching, and mentoring. And I'm just thankful for being able to do that and have found working with these guys and this brand is just one of the things that I'm working on. And so thank you for having us. And I think—

It goes to me. So I like to joke that I'm always stuck between two modes of transportation. One is faster than the other. As I spent the bulk of my career— I spent 11 years being the global design manager at General Motors. Working on Chevrolet Corvette, and then the most recent before I left was the, the electric GMC Hummer. Before that, I had like a small 5-year stint at New Balance where I learned a lot and stayed in advanced product. I got this opportunity to do automotive, and it was a unique thing to me that I never expected, but what I also didn't expect was the opportunity to consult on footwear while I was there. I was able to grow and learn, and it connected me with Aaron, and I kept kind of building a consultant list that kept going, and in 2022 I just kind of went all in on this. We had started working on EQLZ at that time, and it enabled me to also build out other brands where I work and focus on taking other innovation pieces and helping drive them independently. I've spent a lot of time with many e-commerce brands as well as big brands, but I've really enjoyed basically the path and process of giving rhyme and reason to people that are independently going out and decide to spend millions of dollars on molds and try and create their own brand. So it's a really fun journey. And with that, I'm going to hand it off to David.

Everybody, my name is David Burpee. I am a multidisciplinary independent computational designer working across a broad spectrum of industries from footwear and industrial design to medical products, automotive, and a variety of others. My primary background is in the world of high-rise and supertall architecture. I have about 10 years experience. Delivering computational design at all scales from small handheld products to 1,000+ foot tall skyscrapers. I have a personal interest in biomimicry, generative design, emergent design, advanced material science, bio-algorithmic design, and the use of proceduralism to create innovative and novel physical products. In addition to computational design, I lecture at the University of Washington. Where I teach computational design, algorithmic thinking and design for additive manufacturing. And I'm also a computational researcher as part of a National Science Foundation funded research grant focused on the design and use of engineered living materials or ELMS, which is embedding living cells into 3D printed materials to elucidate dynamic behaviors such as self-strengthening, self-hardening, regeneration, biosensing, bioremediation, and a variety of other effects. Uh, the research includes topics like polymer science, synthetic biology, cell engineering, microfluidics, uh, computational design, and the built environment. And I'm here to give you a little bit of a slice into some of the insight of how we utilized computational design and technology to create high-performance, uh, basketball shoes with Aaron and Brett.

Awesome. Aaron's gonna take us on a brief walkthrough of EQLZ.

Yeah, so EQLZ, uh, I think Brett mentioned, it's a, uh, a brand founded in China, basketball brand specifically, that wanted to become more global. And so they knew they needed to, in order to do that, they needed to be on the performance court at the highest level. They tried a couple of times and actually failed pretty good at it. And so they reached out to myself, who had, like I mentioned, been in the industry for 10 years. Working with some of the best athletes and creating some product that made it to that level. And so calling me, and Brett had already been working with them. And one of the things that makes them unique is they are a very— they're almost kind of like a boutique brand in China. And so they also have their own manufacturing and kind of a boutique development center. But they work with world-class— a world-class team, world-class vendors. So I was actually working with a lot of the same vendors and partners that I was at Nike, but in a very small team. And we were able to build trust in that translation that we've been talking about in terms of design, what's in our heads, to creating into 3D, and eventually putting onto somebody's foot to perform at the highest level. That was something that was fairly smooth, a lot smoother than you could maybe imagine. Because again, we were working with world-class team and doing it at kind of a small level. And one of the things that they talk about that they have written on their wall is this idea of being born with nothing. And so they think that we all start with the same thing, a blank piece of paper. When we're all born, we're all human, and we're all born into the same environment. And so that's their idea of like, don't take anything for granted. And then they also have this idea of equalize with everything. And so that is about looking and searching for empathy and always trying to find empathy for the people that you're trying to serve. And that is a big thing for me. And so as soon as I started talking with them about the brand they wanted to build, it resonated quite a bit with me. And so at that point, I was all in and committed and excited to be a part of it. And this is just a couple photos from their facility, which is amazing, actually. Out of all the development centers that I've ever worked at, I'd fly out tomorrow to go back and work there for weeks and stay there, because it's a very family-oriented environment. I love it.

Wonderful. Thought we would hit you with a table of contents so you know what we're going to go over. But all jokes aside, this was actually broken down into how we developed and how we did the product, because ultimately internal stories you want to make external. So listening to who you're serving, form follows function, millimeters matter, and then hearing what they said. So as we go down this path, just keep those in mind as that's each section of the presentation.

So if you go, actually go back one.

Sure.

One thing on this, we wanted to, this is like boiling down the whole design process if we could into 4 things that we think matter the most. And those are the 4. So starting off with listing the population that you're trying to serve, and that is the basketball players player in the basketball game, where we believe in the culture of basketball and the power of sport, and that it's a global game. 25% of the NBA is actually international now, and the culture behind basketball is incredibly rich, and we think it has the potential to drive a global community and to break down barriers that sometimes are there. And we all A lot of us that are in sport have been witness to that where barriers do get broken because of the game and back to that idea of equalizing. So that's where the name actually came from. EQLZ is short for equalize and because we believe that the game is an equalizer for all. The game doesn't care who you are, where you come from, what gender you are, what you look like, it just wants you to play. And that's what we're here to do is to inspire people to play the game and enable them with products to do it.

[SPEAKING CHINESE] So as the three of us began working together, there was kind of a singular thread that seemed to weave its way through all of our design conversations. And that's the idea of looking towards nature, not only for design inspiration, but I think it became kind of the lens through which we measured whether we were on the right path or what we were doing was correct. Throughout some of this presentation, you'll see how we looked at the biomechanics of the human body, as well as some bodies up here on the screen, the musculature of the foot, various pattern typologies seen in nature, and a variety of other natural systems as inspiration for everything from kind of high-level design concept down to sub-millimeter details. Specifically, we look towards nature and how we can use computational design to model or mimic natural systems for the purpose of optimizing and improving performance characteristics, as well as creating a unique aesthetic language.

So before we even started drawing, we wanted to take a look at the game and break down and analyze the game. And we all believed that the game actually has stayed the same over the decades, at least the decades that I've been working on product for the game. And that actually 2 years ago around this time, March Madness, it was Purdue, Indiana. And if anybody remembers this game, it's pretty— you should go back and watch a YouTube of it. It's amazing. From the beginning of the game to the end was nonstop, just relentless speed. And the positions of the game were all still being played, just played at a higher level. So I actually had the— yeah, the blessing to work with the top 3 athletes on product. So Steve Nash, Scottie Pippen, and Jason Kidd, they define those types of plays. So that first step speed, transition speed, and shifting speed. And those still exist in the game today just by different players, I think, operating at a higher level, more athleticism and higher speed. But the needs are still there. And so we wanted to— we set out to create one shoe for each one of those positions, each one of those player types.

Perfect. As we broke it down, we wanted to look at how the speed of the game could form. So the main portion of it was taking those modern players, laying out what first step speed is, what transition speed is, and shifting speed. But then obviously, like anybody else, going and analyzing the product. But past that, we wanted to also look at how it ties in the speed of nature. What you'll see is there is obviously 3 columns. We're going to focus on transition speed and shifting speed today. But we were developing 3 products simultaneously, and one is a future. The main thing, though, no matter what we did, was this mentality of form follows function. Every decision that we made and everything that we created on it, we knew was going to affect how each one of these speeds affect in playing the game. So we always started with the performance, shaped with intent, and then we avoided the excess. And the way we did that was by starting with the foot. And then we augmented our speed. As you can see, the anatomical drawings at the bottom, we were building around what each one of these things do. So as you look at first step speed, it's about an immediate response. So we were looking at the falcon and how it has the quickest launching speed and diving down through. When you look at transition speed, it's about kind of endless movement and looking at the mako shark and where that comes into play. Shifting speed was looking at how all angles— you're looking at somebody that's going to change and transition and have an immediate explosion and what that reaction is. And while we can look at nature as an aesthetic inspiration, but it was also how do you tie it into what the body is going through as the player is doing these things and making sure that our footwear is encompassing into that. So with that, the last came first. We developed a last that was built obviously around the human foot, but that last, no matter what we did, became our basis to how the two speeds that we're gonna talk about today performed. We went right into transition speed, was probably the first one that we kicked off with, which as you can see is the consistent movement of the Mako. You could see the foot map pressure that we were looking at and what was based around that type of style and play, and this became the basis for how we created that product. But as the last stayed as the basis, and we knew that the game was getting faster, that foundation doesn't change between transition and shifting speed. So we did not do a multiple last approach. We used the main one here, and then we built the same, a new style of play that was based off of it. As you can see, that would be the shifting speed of how the cheetah— and sometimes you might hear me call it Duma. Internally we call it Duma. That's another name for cheetah as well. So that was how the Duma was striking, and you can see that we were referencing the pad of the foot and breaking it down.

So can you, can you hold a pause on that one?

Absolutely.

Thanks. So this is at the point where— so I had this vision in my head about— or I've had it for a very long time, in fact. Where's Bo Lupo?

Way over here.

Way over there. So Bo Lupo, I would say, is the godfather of 3D for Nike. So helped bring in all of the 3D processing for Nike. And I was lucky to work with him in a category in training. When we were just starting that. And I came in when he was already implementing all that. And he shared a story with me earlier about reminding me when I had this vision for a traction pattern. We had this old traction node that was proven out to work best on basketball courts and on the turf. And we were in training, so we were trying to do multi-surface. And I wanted this node to morph and to use a parametric, bring in— how people function, how their foot functions, all that, and the servicing. And we were working with a 3D modeler at the time. I'm like, can't you just make an algorithm and just do this? And this is back in 2007 or something. So some of these softwares didn't even exist. And so I've always had this vision about taking the human foot, turning it into a last, which building the footwear around. And I always start designing the last first, always. Always with every client that I work with. That's part of my requirement. And then this is when I got a hold of David because I don't have that skill set myself. And I think that's part of the conversation here is like, yeah, you can learn different softwares as a designer, and you should be able to converse in those softwares. But in terms of being fluent in the software, That's not me. That's David Burpee. So I got a hold of David, brought him in, and started talking with him about how to take this performance of the foot and translate that into a shoe that then someone can perform on and use that weapon that they have of fluid speed and shifting speed onto the court. So if you go to the next. So that's when— started diving further into this idea of fluidity and transition speed. How do you get the— someone that kills— their secret weapon, their superpower on the court is to just beat someone on the court with that relentless flow, nonstop, just like the Mako shark. If the shark stops swimming, it dies. These players, if they stop just pounding down the court, running down the court, that is their— that is their superpower. So how can I work with a computational parametric designer to take this idea of turning that last into a product that has that flow? And what are the materials that we can use? How do we organize those materials in such a way so that they create the form in which elevates the player when they wear it?

Once we got Transition Speed into a solid position, we started working on shifting. So they were roughly, I don't know, call them a 3 3-week differentiation, so not that different. But we started really breaking down how we're going to look at movement. And it became about this notion of it kind of holistically wrapping the foot. So it would grow from underneath the foot and wrap up around it. And it was based off of this idea of speed and movement and capturing it while it sits still. So as you look at it, a lot of the imagery that we based it off of was obviously the movement of the cheetah, but as well as looking at the dirt path that was going on past it and looking how the encompassment of movement was still inspiring. One of my favorite images was obviously the dots. Like, I found this beautiful graphic of somebody had taken a graphic design and created the cheetah and the dots just shooting off of it. But it was just this mentality of creating this level of dynamic movement and fluidity that wraps around it and continuously makes it look like that you can shift and stop at any moment. But it was also built around the manufacturing techniques that we were trying to go after of having this outsole that's going to come up and really encompass around the foot, but just enable an incredible fit and feel as well. So it established the two positions as very different on court, but enabling the two different types of speed that we were going down as well.

And then, uh, this is one of my favorite, uh, slides and also just topics, um, and, and I've been hearing a lot of conversation around it, uh, especially earlier in the beginning, um, in this this idea of human and machine, like how do you get these things to work together? Because I personally don't believe, and we don't believe, that it's one or the other. In fact, I personally think that the answer is in the middle. And so we did do a lot of parametric design, and that's what built the initial design. And once that was printed out, things— the surfacing— things weren't just Right. So that's me actually grinding away on the 3D model that I put Bondo on. I was sanding it because the surfacing just wasn't being captured the way I wanted it to be. And I believe there's something about these human hands that create— in Japanese design, they call it wabi-sabi— these little imperfections, these kind of human touches that I think have to be in the product that we put on our human bodies. Maybe there's things that you can talk about in the fashion world that don't need that, but they're short-lived. And I'm not here to create more stuff. I'm here to create better performing product that you want to keep in your life because it helps make your life better, in this case, the game that you play better and your experience with that better. And so that idea of that human touch I think is absolute, absolutely needed. And so Dave and I— well, all three of us, we've had a lot of fun finding that balance between the hands and the machine. So— and that's where I'm kind of— actually, Bo and I— I hadn't seen Bo for years. And he actually sat down at our table, and he mentioned this to Dave and Brett. Had just met him, that I'm known for kind of this idea that millimeters matter. Because I fuss over the millimeters because I do believe that they matter, like the surfacing and how light hits a surface, how it performs and translates on a court. You move— I worked with Serena Williams for 7 years. And I have footage from when I first started working with her when she rolled her ankle. I believe it was a difference of millimeters that made the difference between her rolling her ankle and not finishing the Australian Open to win, possibly if she was wearing a different shoe, that she could have won that Open at the time. And with footwear, you don't have that many to play with. So the decisions that you make are critical. And so using 3D and using the softwares and making sure that those millimeters are going where you want them, and the— the pick down of the pixelation, the pixels are where you want them, is critical. So being able to work with David back and forth, some late nights, because it's also Asia, working with Asia and the mold shop. And that was also something that made it amazing is that, like I said, the trust and the translation that we had with our factory partner over there and the vendors that they work with. We couldn't have done it without them either.

I think adding to that, the constant search for innovation as well. They helped us find a NIT partner halfway through the process that changed how we created everything. And then it went— and I think the duality of Millimeters Matter is that almost every image that you see on screen here somehow was done by our hand and working through to make sure that every little detail came across. And I think that that played out a key part of bringing back this human touch into each one of these products as well, because it was the constant battle of making sure that it performed for the foot as well. So with that—

Yeah, so we already hit on nature being a unifying element for both 247 and 360. I'll kind of walk you through briefly the computational design, which really sought to just kind of enrich the already existing design concepts that that we were working with. So for 247 at the top there, we were obviously looking at the motion of a shark, and we wanted to study the relationship between the scales of a shark and how those relate to fluid motion and propulsion, and how that can then translate to traction on a basketball court. So there's a variety of scale shapes actually seen in nature that you see there. So I built out a computational system that allowed for kind of rapid testing of a variety of these scale shapes, profiles while still remaining— maintaining some of those dimensional relationships and eliminating errors. So the system populates the outsole pattern with global control over density, alignment with the gait line, orientation, shaping, size, section profile, and various other parameters to balance performance, traction, flexibility, court feel, and aesthetics. So each of the 220 individual scales were modeled as a dynamic procedural object that can respond to pressure map data based upon its location on the outsole, which you kind of saw on the previous slide. For 360, we're looking again at pattern typologies that are really multidirectional, as well as patterns that can be highly tuned for performance. So we looked at several generative growth algorithms when we were starting 360, but ultimately landed on the reaction diffusion kind of class of patterns. Patterns. This pattern typology is found in a variety of flora and fauna in the world, such as the patterns on, say, a tropical fish, or the stripes on a zebra. The Gray-Scott model, which is the equation that you see on the screen there, can model these patterns and elicit a really wide array of pattern types using a single equation, just by manipulating the kind of main parameters of the equation called the speed and kill rates. So I exploited this variance and established 4 major pattern typologies there that individually elicit certain performance characteristics related to surface contact area, flexibility, weight, and overall court feel. And then using a process called algorithmic gradation, I converted the pressure map data values used, to use in the Gray-Scott equation to to create a seamless and continuously variable outsole pattern that had a highly dynamic performance profile as well as aesthetic language. So that was done with a simulation of 2.1 million points in Houdini on the outsole geometry to create the traction pattern and had control over traction depth, pattern blending, pattern interpolation, response to boundary objects like color dam and other cutout zones, as well as many other variables So you see on the bottom right there the various pattern typologies mapped to different zones on the outsole and how those zones correspond to different pressure map values to drive the pattern generation. So the other thing that we wanted to do was, because both 247 and 360 were designed, again, based upon different types of motion, we wanted to design for motion and also also with motion. So, because we're a small team, it was also important to me that we tried to elevate the design as well as the design communication, both inwardly amongst ourselves as well as externally. So, we adopted a digital pipeline that relies heavily or exemplifies motion simulation, animation, proceduralism, and dynamism. And this process was also kind of a continuation of our interest in modeling natural systems. So I'm going to play a video really quick here. It goes kind of fast. I'll talk through some of these things that you're seeing on screen. Again, 247, this is showing like the kind of the gate line analysis and how the scales can conform to various gate lines and with control over density and scaling, all maintaining that dimensional control. These are a series of launch teaser animations that were done. For both shoes, kind of a triptych, set of three. Obviously 247 was built upon water and kind of building up the shape of the outsole tooling geometry from the form of a human foot. And then showing the kind of scale topology as well. And then for 360, again, we were looking at 360-degree movement, shifting speed, that Gray Scott model that I mentioned earlier. These are these pattern typologies and how they actually are simulated on little pattern kind of test swatches there. This is the simulation on the actual outsole geometry, so that's those 2.1 million points. This is not an additional animation created, this is how the actual tooling geometry was made for 360. And then these are the series of launch animations for 360, obviously building upon kind of the same algorithmic technique, but to create just kind of more abstract visuals prior to the launch of each shoe.

[FOREIGN] I think what was great about his process though, as well, to add to it, is that it became— as you look at the beginning of these, it also became assets for us to launch the product with. So if we go back to like the initial conversation this morning of like how you make a pipeline for this, everything became used. It was such a massive piece for us to be able to tell the story once the product goes live as well.

What a perfect transition into the next slide. So again, I think another thing that we determined as we were working together is that design is communication. We're not making shoes. We're not cutting steel for molds. We're not knitting uppers. And we similarly felt that good design is good communication. So it was important that we have a really high amount of control over the final quality and detail of the shoes, particularly for myself, the mold geometry. And it was also important to be able to test, communicate, and review design items internally as a team, but also to our developers and manufacturing partners. And also then, as Brett mentioned, how we communicate these out into the world around the world. So, we had a goal to limit or if possible eliminate any kind of translation, conversion, or modification from design to production. So, both 247 and 360 utilized a unified design pipeline spanning really from early concept design and prototyping through to high-fidelity product visualization, the animations that you just saw, as well as the one-to-one creation of mold geometry for production. And I think we knew, having seen the visualizations, and the materials, and the colorways, that when we were getting a wear testing sample or a pre-production sample, we had a pretty good idea of what they were going to look, feel, and perform like. So again, the mold geometry for 360 was created in Houdini. For 247 was done in Rhino and Grasshopper. And those two product images there on the right, I think, show the level of parity that we achieved from the digital process to the physical process. The product.

So kind of get towards the end here. One of the things at the beginning we talked about in the design process is always listening to the population you're trying to serve. In this case, it's the community of basketball. And so we knew it was important to not just listen to the population while you're trying to serve them during this design process, but going back and reconnecting with them in a meaningful way. And as growing a brand, it's important to connect with the community, grow the culture, and create conversation. And those things all have to work symbiotically together. And in connecting with the community, we developed a marketing plan which going back into that community and finding what we call the hidden gems. And they could— people would write into our Instagram and state why they think they're a hidden gem within the culture of basketball. and either they did or their parents did or their coaches did or their teammates did, and we got just amazing stories that we sifted through and found the ones that we thought kind of bubbled up, and we sent out a videographer to— and photographer to capture them and their stories, and we put them out onto our Instagram, and we created this special colorway just for them, and it was called the Hidden Gem, and we had a whole story behind it, and it's basically just going back and— and talking about these really special people from the culture, because we also want to do— we want this brand to grow from the culture and grow from the grassroots up. And they don't just embody the game on the court. It's also important to us that they respect the game off the court and respect themselves and others in their community. And so these— you can go into Instagram on EQLZ's Instagram and read these stories. They're really amazing, and they're global. They're all over. We sent this videographer all around the world because we're a globally distributed brand as well.

Building off of that, so I'm kind of the sneaker nerd from this group. I've wanted to do this since like 7th grade, and I've been a part of the internet culture of footwear for a really long time, and you tend to see certain products that are shared and photographed and taken off. Right here is a very small collection, of how the culture embraced us. None of this was asked. A lot of this was just them going out of their way, the love of the form and the feel, photographing it, sharing it, and taking it further. The overwhelming response from a small independent brand that wasn't able to get on many people's end of the year list, as both pairs in the top 5, was an incredible feeling for us because of we're a small group going and creating this. So to see people sharing the culture and spreading the love of something and taking the time to do these beautiful photography and elevating it is something that doesn't happen all the time in footwear anymore. And it was a very unique feeling for all of us. We have variations on here that was done in collaboration with corporate and building out a custom color for a youth giveback program that we do. And just kept it going and just enabled us to have such a great a great moment in time with each one of these.

So the last of the 4 that we talked about in terms of process of design is hearing what they say. Like, what does that community say about what you try to create? And it was interesting at the beginning when we launched just images out on Instagram, I got a lot of direct messaging saying how amazing the shoes looked. And I think there were quite a few people were wondering what I was— after I left Nike, what I was up to. And so this is one of the things that became public. And they said, what an amazing design. And I actually pushed back. And I said, well, until you wear the shoe and it performs at the equal level that you care about its aesthetic, it's not a good design. Because that is design, form and function, right? Like they have to have a symbiotic relationship together. And that's again where the millimeters matter, and where you put those millimeters, and what you use, and what the materials are. And so until you get the feedback about not just the aesthetic, but also about the performance, and they strike that symbiotic balance, then I personally don't think it's a good design. It's not even a conversation. And so it was very rewarding to get some of the feedback after the designs were out there, after the crates were out there, and we're getting performance feedback that matched with the aesthetic. And I'm in this myself, like I said, on my purpose path to create better and to inspire and enable people to pursue their best self. And so to be able to hear back people telling me that they hadn't been playing basketball for years because nothing inspired them, that they bought the shoe and now they're literally, they're back in leagues and playing again, and other people that just love the way the shoes look. And they hadn't been inspired by footwear for a while. And so just getting that validation was amazing. And I did get a direct message from Shaq. It was a very strange dialogue back and forth. You kind of imagine what Shaq would say to you in texting, and that's what I was receiving. It was very, very strange. And finally, he just kind of summed it up at the very end. Because I asked him, I said, so why are you even— why did you care? Why are you asking me? Like, why are we in this conversation? It was so bizarre. And his last text was that. He said, I like what I see. I really like it. That was the last I heard from him. But yeah, just again, getting validation from that community and the population that you're set out to serve, and to hear that back is what you're set out to do.

Love it. And then wrapping up here, we just wanted to tie back to the beginning. So bridging tradition and tech, how we did it, We did it through trust and translation. Ultimately, it's the blend of all of us with our partners, and being able to create something is an entire journey and process through it, but we did something that we think was pretty special for an independent brand, and we were able to really achieve something really unique. On there, you can see each one of our names. We have our you know, go find us on Instagram, and then this QR code, I believe, is gonna take you to questions if you want as well.

Yeah. Can I also just— I want to break one thing, because I do feel like there's a human and machine kind of battle going on here all day. Could we just use the mic and just send it around if anybody has a question? I'd rather have like— because sometimes it's the question after the question that is more insightful and deeper. So if anybody does have a question, Well, why don't—

when they pass that out, you want me to answer that one?

Oh, you already did. Yeah, if anybody has one publicly, just please—

What digital tools did you use to measure the performance of the outsole? Is this related to quality testing?

That question's probably for me. Yeah, so there's a variety of things that we could do to validate the performance. And some of this is actually what we would call forwards validation, where having insight from Aaron and Brett of what kind of dimensionality, for example, how thick of a web should we use? What should the spacing on the individual lugs be? So a lot of that was actually insight that was built into the system so that it was valid, and we had a pretty good sense of how it performed before we even made product. There's some analysis that we can do, like surface analysis, curvature analysis, that we used. Again, we're a small team. Our team, we don't have a biomechanics lab. So I think the other component is we relied on our wear testing partners and getting feedback, real-world feedback. At the end of the day, I think we can use the most high-tech imaginable, but if people play in them and they say that it sucks, it doesn't matter. So we relied a lot on that kind of human connection and getting feedback that way as well.

And luckily that didn't happen.

Next, Mazinger, I wonder, as a computational designer— that's you— How much of the generative work landed in the consumer-facing story was Tech the Star? And I'll— I mean, you can go to the Instagram. We did use a lot of that content on Instagram to talk about it. But I would say we found— well, you guys be the judge. But we tried to find a balance between that human and tech. So we told a lot of the tech stories about the computational designing and the parametrics. At the same time, we were doing the hidden gem and talking about the people of the community, because it's the human beings that play the game, not the importance of the technologies that created the product. We believe at the end of the day, shoes are not going to change the world, but the people who wear the shoes do have the power to do that. So that's what we set out to do.

[SPEAKING CHINESE] I'll just add on. With respect to how it kind of landed in the consumer-facing story, I think we were all a little surprised that some of the computational design content received such a big response. I think for a long time, for 247, it was like the most popular IG post they ever made, and I was like, "Wow, I didn't think people cared about this other than other nerds like me." So I think, I feel like there's kind of a consumer shift towards wanting to understand more about what's going on behind the scenes, why is it like this, why does it look like that, how is it contributing to performance and things like that. So I think we learned that there's actually a lot of appetite for that from even non-technical, non-designer people.

I'll also add one of my other mottos is it's the stories that matter. And I think that's the— people like narrative. People like stories as long as they're authentic and sincere. And there's a deeper meaning behind it. And so again, pairing that with the game and the humanity of the game, I think is what people responded to.

Yeah, over here.

I think it's really interesting to see the biomimicry references, and I'm curious through the process how you build out the interplay between functional design design and using nature as a reference. And so just kind of curious to understand how that process went a little bit more. Is that a question for me? I mean, I personally, like, there is no— for me, there is no performance without style. And if it's just style without performance, it's a fad. And it'll eventually die. And so we use— I use David, and that's why we hit it off so well. Use biomimicry to create performance. So nature has done a pretty good job with design. So literally stealing like an artist from nature and using that to embody into the product. So the fluidity of motion, like water is pretty darn good at flowing around objects. So using that in the foot. And how we want it to flow down the court. Same with the shifting speed of the cheetah. There's some very subtle things in the shoes. Again, the millimeters matter. So presetting the foot. So if you watch— if anybody go to YouTube and watch a cheetah, just before it plants, it spreads its— it splays its foot out, puts its claws out, digs into the ground, and then retracts its claws and goes out. So presetting that shoe and being able to put that shoe in a particular position that ultimately the player will be in was the insight around that. So I mean, the two— and I've been infatuated with sharks. I swam with sharks just a few months ago. And just watching their— and there's something else I want to play with on the skin of the shark and how it ripples over the structure of the bones. Is very interesting to me too, because there's a lot of factories, a lot of our shoes end up with a lot of cement between the layers, and they get stuck, and they get bound into a static object that, yeah, you can flex it, but the skin doesn't flow between each other. So that's something else that when we do the 2.0— so I haven't told David that, but we'll be working on that.

Grant time? Yep, perfect.

Thank you all.

Thank you so much.