Big Sneaker Brands Promised a 3D-Printed Revolution. These Are the Disrupters Making It Happen
WiredThough additive manufacturing wouldn’t exist for another 40 years, the prolific American sci-fi author Murray Leinster penned a 1945 short story featuring a spookily prescient description of what we now know as 3D printing. This thing will start at one end of a ship and build it complete to the other end.” Braddick’s spaceship took more than 24 hours to form, or just a little longer than the time it takes today to spit out a highly complex sneaker from a fused deposition modeling 3D printer. But Zellerfeld is just one of a number of disrupter firms aiming to make good on the grandiose 3D-printing promises that the big sneaker brands have been struggling to make reality. It filed its first additive manufacturing footwear patent in 2012, with the firm’s then COO, Eric Sprunk, predicting a few years later that 3D printing would “revolutionize footwear manufacturing” by making “personalized, rapidly delivered product that is made more efficiently and with less waste.” But that simply hasn't materialized.
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