I still remember picking up my first-ever pair of 3D-printed sneakers. This was deep in the Adidas Futurecraft 4D era in 2017. Back then, they teamed up with Silicon Valley company Carbon for a new tech called Digital Light Synthesis (or DLS). Liquid resin was essentially hardened using light and oxygen to create weird lattice midsoles that didn’t look like anything else out there. At the time, it sounded mental – and the trainers themselves looked pretty mental, too.
That was the USP. For the longest time ever, sneakers hadn’t really changed all that much from an innovation POV. Sure, we got squishier foams like Boost and stretchier knits like Flyknit and the occasional gimmick that lasted six months before disappearing forever (remember when glow-in-the-dark kicks were everywhere?).
