Don’t Run Beta is an initiative by Eugenia Morpugo & Juan Montero to use 3D printing and laser cutting to produce shoes in shops. This will make them on demand and on location eliminating much of the waste and negative impact of the shoes’ production. The shoes are made together with the customer and cost between 70 and 100 Euro,

We asked the designers some questions about their project:

Have you thought about sharing the design files? Or letting people share them?

At this point we are not sharing the file of the shoes because we are still in an experimental phase, we think it will be worth to share them when the quality of the work will be higher.

What would these shoes cost?

The price of the shoes is defined by the sum of different variables. There will be some fixed amount for the design and for the costs of the shop but than each shoe will be have a specific price according to the type of leather that the customer choose and of the size of the shoe. We are interest in presenting a clear connection between the quality of the material used for the shoes and price of the shoes. In the composition of the price the materials are scaled and priced by amount and quality of material used.

 

How long do they take to make?

The time depend on the power of the laser cutting machine used. With the most recent one, available in many fablabs, you can cut soles and upper in half an hour. Also for the connections the time depends from the type o 3d printed used, and the assembly time depend from the skills of the user. An expert can assemble a pair of shoes in less than 20 minutes.

Ultimately will you make the shoes for people? or would you rather that they made the shoes themselves?

During our pilot High street factory we produced the shoes together with the customers. It’s very important that the final user will be part of the entire process.
From choosing the material, understanding the production of the components and ultimately the assembly. Only knowing how to assemble the shoe the user will be able to disassemble it later on in order to repair it.

What was it like using 3D printing?

For us was very interesting experimenting with flexible filament 3d printing and focusing on the production of components rather than final products. In fact we believe that technologies like 3d printers have more potential if considered as part of a more rich system for production than as tool to produce final mono-material products.

What a truly great project in true local production. It would be wonderful to see many more initiative such as this one emerging in the High Street.