Adidas sells ruuning sneaker made by robots in London, and there will be Shanghai version too

Adidas released the first Speedfactory made sneaker in London. This factory located in Germany is the first robot factory of adidas. This city series sneaker named AM4（Adidas Made For）is a light sports sneaker based on the data of athletes. It can provide a comfortable wearing experience. Besides the London version, there will be 5 more versions: Paris version (AM4PAR), LA version (AM4LA), New York Version (AM4NYC), Tokyo Version (AM4TKY), and Shanghai version (AM4SHA).

Except Germany, another Speedfactory of adidas is going to open in Atlanta, GA. Adidas is expecting to start small scale production and design for some particular market by these factories. The customized service will be applied to every single customer in the future, realizing the customized product which is definitely different from the production line. At the same time, it can have quick reaction to the changing trends of fashion.

“With this completely new technique, we can overturn the current mode, and provide customers with products as soon as possible.” David Drury, the sneaker purchasing director of adidas, said in the interview of Reuters.

For now, adidas mainly depends on over 1 million workers of the factories (in China and Vietnam). They can produce about 0.6 billion pairs of sneaker and other sports accessories every year. Now adidas is transferring some of the work to the places near its main market so that it can provide the new products more quickly. At the same time, it can well deal with the increasing salaries of the employees and expensive transportation freight.

Now it takes about 18 at most for adidas to design, produce, and deliver the products. Adidas is expecting to make the period short to 45 days by the automotive robot production.

The customized version will be more expensive than the ordinary version. It is known that the AM4LDN is priced at ￡169.95 (about 1483 RMB) when it goes into the London market.

Adidas’ competitor — Nike is also working on the practice to shorten the production time. Last month, Nike open a workshop in New York, where customers can pick up the styles and colors they like, and get the final product in 90 minutes.

However, from the situation now, the production capacity of the robot factory is low. In the following 5 to 10 years, it is very hard to realize the completely automotive production. According to the prediction of adidas, there will be about 1 million pairs of sneakers produced by robot every year after Speedfactory put into use. However, adidas totally produces 0.36 billion pairs of sneakers in 2016.