HILOS
HILOS partners with Steve Madden
Footwear designer Steve Madden is working with HILOS to deliver faster and on-demand production of its products.
HILOS, which uses computational design to deliver footwear through a 3D printing-enabled on-demand process that reduces inventory and waste, says the partnership will enable Steve Madden to cut new product development times to just sixteen weeks, and offer shoes which are manufactured and delivered within days of purchase.
"Steve Madden has always been about speed, but that's increasingly come at odds with becoming a more sustainable company. This HILOS partnership is revolutionary for us because we can produce faster, make less, but sell more," says Steve Madden's Chief Sustainability Officer, Gregg Meyer. "This is just the start of something big for both of us.”
“We couldn’t have a better long-term partner in Steve Madden. This is a brand with speed at its core, a brand that built itself with new ideas being prototyped every week. That read-and-react muscle is core to a more sustainable future - one with less inventory and waste,” said Elias Stahl, HILOS Founder and CEO.
In an interview with TCT last year, HILOS co-founder and former Chief Creative Gaia Giladi described how 3D printing “allows for circularity on a level that traditional manufacturing doesn't, because you're able to use a single material.” Discussing the way the technology is opening up new ways of making for the footwear industry, Giladi said: “We want to bring something new to the industry, the industry does not need more traditional shoes. And so we use 3D printing as a tool to invent new methods of make, to allow for ondemand manufacturing, and to avoid over and under producing by only making after the customer orders.”
Earlier this month, A$AP Rocky‘s announced a collaboration with PUMA on the monster-inspired Mostro 3.D, fully 3D printed spiky red and black slip ons which were created using Carbon's resin-based Digital Light Synthesis.
