When people imagine what 3D printing is, they might think of plastic knickknacks and miniature figurines that teenagers make in their high school libraries. For HILOS (Human Innovation Lab Operating System), 3D printing means creating footwear that’s chic, low-waste, and runway ready.
“Brands are overproducing 20% because they don’t know what size and styles are going to be needed when, and so they have to overproduce, and they’re still missing sales,” HILOS CEO Elias Stahl told TechCrunch. HILOS pitched today on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024.
That overproduction leads to waste, which contributes to the 300 million pairs of shoes that Americans throw away every year. When those shoes end up in landfills, they can take 30 to 40 years to decompose.
A surefire way to minimize overproduction is to only produce what customers actually buy — but on-demand retail services are expensive, since the shoes aren’t made in bulk. But with its 3D printing technology, HILOS has found a way to print stylish shoes on demand within 72 hours.
“HILOS has patented new forms of shoemaking specifically for digital manufacturing, so they’re specifically for less labor, less component parts,” Stahl said. “We take what might traditionally be five or six different materials, combine them into one printed material, so that you can literally print and assemble in the U.S., paying American wages without having the shoe be a $300 shoe.”
HILOS doesn’t sell shoes on its own; it borrows concepts from past e-commerce trendsetters like Bonobos. For brands that work with HILOS, their stores can stock less inventory, so that customers can try them on — then, once customers figure out what style and size suits them, they can have the shoe shipped to them.
“So instead of having 20 [shoes] and having to reorder every 120 days, they can have two and reorder every 72 hours,” Stahl said.
To make its 3D-printed shoes, HILOS uses powder-based printing, as opposed to the cheaper, plastic styles that you’d find in schools.
“Powder is the most expensive, most industrial, and the highest quality and finish,” Stahl said. “So when we pull something like this out of the printer, it’s got this soft, suede, velvety feel.”
The shoe itself is not magically appearing out of the 3D printer — the company prints a handful of modular shoe parts, which can be easily and quickly assembled. Nor are they made of the 3D-printed material, which would likely sacrifice functionality and comfort. Instead, HILOS stocks materials like leather and knits, which it also uses in a modular, multi-functional way.
“This is where a modular product creation process really allows for a lot of efficiencies,” Stahl said. “You can have 10 different leather wares that supply 40 different styles.”
Even with this modular manufacturing set-up, designing a shoe still takes a long time. As part of its tech platform for brands, HILOS uses AI and AR technology to more quickly convert sketches of shoes into 3D models that can be printed.
“We can automate and accelerate that process, so a 2D image can immediately become a 3D file that is manufacturable, that is wearable, and it’s end to end,” Stahl said.
If a designer works in more analog methods to model the prototypes of their shoes, the AR tools can mimic the design, taking it from physical to digital.
“The idea is to allow the designer to design in the physical world, and to design not through a screen or a mouse, but to be creative where they are creative, to be inspired where they’re inspired, because technology, after certain levels, should become invisible,” Stahl said.
HILOS intentionally decided to set up shop in Portland, Ore., where over 500 outdoor brands are headquartered, such as Nike, Adidas, and Columbia. The company is one of the leaders of Portland’s Made in Old Town project, which aims to bring green footwear manufacturing back onshore. Oregon lawmakers backed the initiative, approving a $125 million grant to revitalize 10 buildings and four city blocks.
“Rather than having these giant factories on the outskirts of town in Guangdong, China, we can have our actual communities here in the U.S., our downtowns filled with on-demand manufacturing that’s high-craft, high-quality labor, that’s sustainable, and that reinvents how we see our downtown,” Stahl said. “Portland has been an amazing home for us.”
On stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, HILOS announced a new partnership with the shoe brand Steve Madden, who will use HILOS’ on-demand product creation platform to make its supply chain more sustainable.