Even today, the art of shoemaking can be a painstakingly manual process. Each pair of shoes goes through multiple application stages, from stitching to gluing. Shoe development and manufacturing is also incredibly wasteful.
Fast forward to the last decade, and we’ve seen the advent of super shoes, a significant leap in footwear technology, but with that even more waste, with running shoes creating about 20 million tonnes of landfill waste each year.
But On Running, the fast-rising Swiss footwear and apparel brand, have a novel and jaw-dropping way of potentially minimizing excess production waste: web-spinning robots.
On announced this week that it has developed a new innovation that promises to redefine the way we make shoes, with what it’s dubbed LightSpray technology, which is essentially, super light, super responsive spray-on shoes.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The company also revealed that its signature athlete, Hellen Obiri, won this year’s 2024 Boston Marathon in a pair of these bleeding edge tech shoes, dubbed the On Cloudboom Strike LS (the “LS” stands for LightSpray).
On has developed a series of robotic arms at its facility in Switzerland that can spray together an entire shoe in just six minutes. The shoe itself is slipper like, with no laces and appears as it it is one continuous creation. It’s constructed in two successive phases: a single, continuous application of the filament for the upper, which takes about three minutes. Then, the outsole is bonded to the upper using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), without the need for any glues. The robot arm then does another quick pass to apply the colorway.
The entire process of creating a shoe takes just six minutes.
Obiri, who’s been secretly wear testing this new tech since the first prototypes, admits that she initially didn’t trust this weird looking, futuristic slipper boot of a super shoe.
“The first time I saw the shoes, I said, ‘No,’” Obiri said to the New York Times. “‘I can’t run with these.
“In the changing room, even my colleagues were saying, ‘It’s a joke,’” she admitted. “They were saying, “‘You can’t use these shoes for a marathon.’”
Obiri bought into the performative results of the Cloudboom Strike LS, and then won the Boston Marathon in the shoe, closing the final mile at a blistering pace, which suggests that these shoes work for the best in the world.
“One of the visions was, imagine if you go to a race, you have one of these robots with you, and on race day, if it’s wet or dry, the robot sprays you a perfect shoe for the moment,” says Ilmarin Heitz, On’s senior director of footwear. “And at the end of the race you take it off, recycle it, and go to the next race.”
Heitz also noted that this approach to creating a running shoe has reduced the company’s carbon footprint when creating an upper by about 75%.
The journey of this revolutionary technology began when a member of On’s innovation team named Johannes Voelchert watched how a hot glue gun was capable of creating spiderweb-like structures for a Halloween-themed craft. This led to the initial inspiration for LightSpray. He soon realized that this quick and efficient method of creating textiles could be applied to the complex shapes of shoes.
LightSpray technology strips away every unnecessary component and allows for the rapid and efficient creation of a shoe’s upper in a single process. The polymers used are the building blocks of this technology, forming a helical shape that is then applied to a foot mold. This process ensures a perfect fit, akin to a second skin.
The On team’s experimentation and trial-and-error led to several prototypes. To achieve the desired results, they had to fine-tune various parameters such as the volume of material, structure of the helix, heat zones, filament construction, robot speed, and spray angles.
The On team conducted extensive tests, analyzing biomechanics and physiology to understand how the shoes affected performance and whether or not they met athletes’ needs. They examined ground reaction forces, landing, and push-off dynamics to refine the design. The feedback from athletes was generally positive, with many noting the lightweight feel and glove-like fit.
On released an extremely limited run of the Cloudboom Strike LS in April in order to pass World Athletics’ regulations regarding prototype shoes being used in races. But the company says that it will roll out another limited run for purchase this fall. (We’ll be sure to report on the Cloudboom Strike LS’s availability when the next lot drops in a few months.)
