During our travels through Costa Rica and Mexico at the start of this year, I ventured into the shoe capital of the world Leon, Mexico. I went into the state of Guanajuato to learn more about the production process for shoes, what I discovered was that it was complex and can be expensive. There are low cost ways to get into the sneaker game, but if you’re looking to make the next Yeezy, Nike, or Adidas brand, get ready for a heavy investment.
Some of the things you should prepare for include:
Shoe Design & Pattern Making
Designing and creating the patterns for a shoe starts with tape and a shoe last. The design is then drawn on top of the tape, which will be peeled off to create a digital pattern.
Sampling The Design
Once the fabrics are selected and the shoe design is finalized, it will go into the sampling process. You may have to go through multiple samples in order to finalize the shoe design before going into production.
Creating The Shoe Mold
Once your design is set and if your sneaker requires a unique sole that is not available from the factory, it will have to be made on a CAD based system. The CAD design is then made into a physical block with a CNC machine. The CNC machine creates the mold you need for the sole injection process.
Metallization Process
For shoes that need metallic accents, plastics will go through a metallization process to make this a reality.
Injection Molding
During the injection molding process the sole is created using the metal block created by the CNC machine. This allows for thousands of soles to be efficiently made. In this factory they are able to recycle 100% of all rubber that is is scrapped.
Fabric Cutting
With the sample and soles created the fabrics are now ready to be cut. Two common ways fabrics are cut are by Laser or Die Cutting. A laser cutter is able to cut fairly quickly, but is normally used for production runs less than 5,000 units. Die Cutting is a popular method for production runs over this amount as it cuts through various materials in a single pass.
Sewing and Finishing The Shoe
On the production floor you will see a variety of sewing machines, presses and gluing processes in order to make the design. Every shoe design is unique and it requires its own process but the end result is a finished sneaker.
Check out the latest video on YouTube showing you the various steps involved in the production process:
