In 1958, Joe Foster co-founded Reebok and helped grow the company to a $4 billion valuation. he saysbefore you go out in 1991. (In 2005, Adidas bought Reebok for $3.8 billion back in 2005 selling it in 2021.)
Now the 89-year-old entrepreneur is helping launch a new high-tech shoe brand with slides that are completely 3D printedmeaning they are printed, not assembled, from layer upon layer of stacked plastic filament.
It's also the first commercially available shoe designed by AI, the founder says The entrepreneur.
Credit: Syntilay
The shoe is the first from Sintilaya brand that is advised by Foster. The founder and CEO of Syntilay is a serial entrepreneur Ben Weiss25 years old, who has previously published a weekly podcast, an NFT company and a sneaker brand.
Weiss and Foster released slides Thursday on the lucrative U.S. footwear market, which generated about $78 billion in revenue in 2021 and is forecast to reach $104 billion in 2028. according to RunRepeat.
The shoe comes in five colors – blue, black, red, beige and orange – and is custom made to fit each buyer.
Weiss and Foster said they plan to produce about a few thousand pairs, enough to make Syntilay a household name, before switching gears and creating unique AI-designed shoes that brands and content creators can sell as their own.
entrepreneur spoke with the founders about how they got into business, how AI contributed to shoe design, and what Foster learned from Reebok.
How did this partnership start?
Foster: Ben (Weiss) came to us with an idea. I think what inspired us was Ben's enthusiasm. This partnership has been working for 18 months.
Weiss: I just reached out and a few months later, we met in person and had some great conversations. I just explained the possibility here.
There are no traditional sizes with these slides. How are people getting a personalized fit?
Weiss: Shoes are scanned to fit via your phone's camera app. Our partner, Zellerfeld, powers this method. They have a great way to get the best shoe for you that takes your measurements from your phone camera and prints it out specifically.
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Can you tell me more about the shoe design?
Weiss: The design is quite unique in that we created its shape with AI. That was an inspiration for what we built. We had a sketch made by our (human) designer, and then we just created a 3D shape from that. The patterns on the shoes are also all designed by AI; we generated the models. We played with many different versions of this. And so it is very detailed.
Credit: Syntilay
So would you credit AI as the shoe designer or was there more human involvement than that?
Weiss: It's pretty separate, I'd say. This is the most AI-designed shoe we've ever seen produced so far. It's very much an AI shoe. We still had a human designer helping us make it and guiding it along the way. I think this is probably the best that can be done in this current state.
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of 3D printed shoes?
Foster: The advantage is that it speeds up development. You can produce a product in a few days and if it is wrong, you can get a new sample. So the development is much faster. Now, how much you can develop it and what the process is, we're still learning. The downside is that you can't do volume 3D printing, but you can get a product to market and you can make sure the product does its job.
Side profile of slides in red. Credit: Syntilay
The upper part of the shoe is orange. Credit: Syntilay
The bottom of the shoe is blue. Credit: Syntilay
What are some lessons you learned at Reebok and how will you apply them here?
Foster: We learned that you can have problems, you can get challenges, but those challenges are opportunities. We started our business as Mercury Sports Shoes. We couldn't register it so we came up with a better name. We also had to change our silhouette because Adidas didn't like our two stripes and a T-bar. We changed that to vector, which you now see at Reebok. I think that's what you do with everything. If you are in a business, you have to be ready to change, willing to change. In fact, you should ask for change. And if someone challenges you, that's a good opportunity.
How do you hope to expand Syntilay?
Weiss:We're starting with this pair of shoes now in different colorways, but it's a pretty limited run overall. Ultimately, we want to give more brands and content creators a shot in the footwear space. What we have today is a faster method of making shoes with artificial intelligence and 3D printing. Our approach as we go is to make brand new, original designs for brands and influencers.
A pair of slides. Credit: Syntilay
What is the ultimate goal of this launch?
Foster:It took me 10 years to get Reebok into America. But when we got the 5-star ratings from Runner's World, there was a difference. They loved us then – America loved Reebok. We got credibility. Somewhere along this process, Syntilay will gain credibility. It can be very simple. It can be a person. The thing now is just getting these shoes out there and getting people's imaginations going, “Wow, that's great.”
This interview has been edited and lightly cropped for clarity.