‘Do it yourself’ has reached new level: make your own shoes. In this case it’s sneakers, which happen to have become an essential for many wardrobes and easily combine with many different styles.
Today we’re bring you the One-Day Sneaker Kitproject which has just launched a campaign on Kickstarter with a goal of 10,000 euros. The way it works is as follows: you make your order and then will receive a kit with everything needed to build and sew your own sneakers. And, for now, the price is actually affordable. Just so you know, you have until the end of the second week of November to backthe project.
The creators of the One-Day Sneakers project are Roderick Pieters and Troy Nachtigall. Roderick is an architect with a passion for footwear design who has won a number of awards and is launching his own baby footwear label next year. Troy is the designer and director of the SLEM Footwear Innovation Center, a place to join forces to develop new concepts for footwear design and the birth place of this new and innovative idea.
So Catchy! Where Fashion Begins talked with Roderick Pieters recently to get to know a bit more about DIY projects and how they’ve worked their way into the fashion world in recent years.
SO CATCHY!: How did you come up with the idea of creating One-Day Sneaker Kit?
RODERICK PIETERS: Because I really like to make the ONEDAY’s myself and because the people who do the workshop are always so enthusiastic i really wanted to share this to more people. to give them the same experience. it feels really good when they are finish and you just made (and even designed) your own sneakers. You will have a different relationship with your shoes when you made them yourself.
So it was the logical next step after teaching the ONEDAY sneaker workshop for some years. There were always some people after the workshops who asked me for the patterns and some extra soles. It is addictive, once you made one you want to make another one.
And also because Troy Nachtigall, an interaction designer, my partner in this project and also a teacher at SLEM, made these sneakers during one of the workshop to put in some sensors and took it to a technology fair. There, lots of people were interested in the sneaker and also wanted to make one. When we talked about this the idea was born to make this available for everybody by developing it into a kit.
SC!: How was the process, from the idea to the kit?
RP: Because of the workshop experiences I knew exactly what had to be changed to be able to make these sneakers from a kit (without a teacher).
We simplified the system and patterns even more and made it more clear and more easy to understand. This i tested in the workshops, which worked. Before i was more busy with explaining on how to make but now i could focus more on the design part of the workshop. After this we were sure it would work as a kit.
Then we started to think about all the stuff we wanted to put in the kit. They most difficult were the soles. We wanted to use a specific sole but the problem was the minimum quantity you need to order. This investment would be to big for us, thats why we decided to start a Kickstarter campaign. The big advantage is that after the campaign you know exactly how many you need to order from every size. We want to order twice as many soles so we can continue after Kickstarter and work from there to really build this into a company.
Also it was a process of making many, many ONEDAY’s to get to the right pattern. From there i create a new 4 in 1 pattern, made a little collection and choose the different color options. Then we worked on the website and the video. We choose to show the making process in the video to show how easy it is. I think the main challenge of this project to convince people of the idea that they can really make their own sneakers. Most people don’t believe that in the beginning. But really, anybody can do it!
SC!: How do you think the market will respond?
RP: I think a lot of people will like the ONEDAY sneaker because of their clean, minimal, simple and friendly accessible design, the nice leather and the sustainable (glueless) concept. Then i have no idea how many people are really willing to make their own sneakers. Maybe most people just want to buy and don’t feel like making. Or like I said, they don’t think they are able to make it. I do think that this is a product that can sell itself after people have made their first ONEDAY’s and shown them to their friends, hopefully they will be inspired and want to make one themselves. Lets see!
SC!: If you reach the Kickstarter goal, who will work on the project? And when will we see the first kit on the market?
RP: Troy and me will put the kits together and work from there, hopefully it will expand so much that we have get more people to help with ONEDAY.
The first kits should be delivered before Christmas. We planned it like this because we think this is the perfect Christmas gift.
SC!: What’s the average price of a DIY sneaker kit?
RP: For €70 you have the ONEDAY Full kit, which has everything in to make your pair of ONEDAY’s. Now on Kickstarter we still have some €60 early bird kits available. Hurry!
SC!: In your opinion, what does fashion need nowadays?
RP: Difficult question. I mean it very hard to describe nowadays fashion because it seems that everything is allowed now. Everything at the same time and mixed. Very eclectic. Just like with music and other art forms fashion is a reflection of our time. So it will always change and never stops, which makes it very interesting. Of course needs some more awareness from both consumers and brands/stores when you talk about production. It would be better and also interesting when we don’t use cheap labor anymore and produce more locally.
SC!: Complete this sentence: The perfect shoe is…
RP: Impossible to find, so you better try to make it yourself.
Photos courtesy of Roderick Pieters and Troy Nachtigall of ONEDAY
You can support the ONEDAY Sneaker Kit Project here on Kickstarter
Translation and Layout by Michael Padilla
