Founders: Shafae Ali and Alfie Mcmeeking

The Problem

The footwear industry is highly unsustainable with 23 billion pairs being produced annually - 80% of which go to landfill and 20% incinerated. Current manufacture is also quite complex, generating 13.5kg of CO2 emissions per pair, and using over 360 manufacturing steps and 65 parts. Existing systems make a large range of discrete sizes, and predict demand, meaning high levels of overproduction, irregularity in fit and wastage. The sheer amount of waste is daunting and was a key motivator to redesign footwear by making personalised form more accessible and improving materials/manufacture to reduce resource consumption and environmental impact.

The Solution

A fully 3D printed single material shoe that is automatically generated from a users 3D footscan. Customers scan their feet using existing 3D scanners, from which a unique pair of 3D printable shoes are automatically generated using our innovative algorithm.

This makes personalised footwear far more accessible and removes the need for a designer, meaning instead of weeks, our 3D file creation process can be done in seconds. Our concept aims to eradicate the complex global supply chain, whilst creating the most sustainable and comfortable shoe possible.

The Company

Our business started as a part of a university research project which focused on addressing sustainability in the footwear industry for the year 2040. The current industry suffers from significant overconsumption, and is an unsustainable trend to continue. Our future scoping project aims to address this and develop the most sustainable shoe for 2040; this will be achieved by reducing the number of shoes consumed, making footwear fully biodegradable, and simplifying the manufacturing process. The technologies to enable this are augmented reality (AR), biomaterials and 3D printing respectively. The business today took the roadmap for this vision and made it realistic for the year 2022. Now our focus is on personalisation for comfort and sustainability.

A Quote

"It's been a great experience so far in the TATA Varsity Pitch Semi Finals. It was inspiring to see so many other young entrepreneurs and we look forward to the next stages." - Shafae Ali

Top Tips

Be problem obsessed, not product obsessed - there's countless ways to solve the same problem, so the focus should be understanding exactly what you're trying to solve and who for.

A bad first prototype is a great first step. Don't be afraid for things to start crudely, as over time it evoles - iteration is the key to making things better across all aspects of a business.