AMONG the boutiques in the canal district of Amsterdam is a shoe shop, called W-21, that has a selection of stylish footwear in the window. A select group of customers were recently invited there to have their feet scanned by a laser, and then to spend 30 seconds walking on a modified treadmill in a special pair of shoes stuffed with accelerometers, pressure gauges, thermometers and hygrometers. All this generated a wealth of data, which was displayed on a large screen along with a model of how the walker’s feet were moving.

From these data an algorithm determined the ideal soles for the customer’s shoes. Upstairs, a couple of 3D printers began humming away to make those soles. In about two hours they were ready to be fitted to a new pair of shoes, uniquely tailored to each person’s feet.

Some level of customisation is nothing new for buyers of apparel. But there is a big difference between clothes, which are relatively straightforward to tailor and alter, and shoes, which are solid and composed of lots of materials that require different skills and special equipment to produce. It is possible to acquire orthopaedic and specialist shoes, such as ski boots, in which the soles have been shaped to suit an individual’s feet. Completely tailor-made shoes are also available if you have deep pockets and are patient. At the top end of the market, John Lobb, a London bootmaker established in 1866, will happily hand-stitch you a pair of Oxford brogues shaped around every dimple and bump in your feet, but they will cost £4,000 ($5,500) and may take six months to deliver. What was going on in Amsterdam was an experiment by ECCO, a large Danish shoe brand that owns W-21, to bring bespoke shoemaking to the mass-market high street.

The shoe-shop event horizon

Lobb, and firms like it, make shoes using patterns called lasts. These are solid blocks of wood carved precisely into the shape of a customer’s feet. The time and labour required to create these lasts explain the cost and tardiness of the finished product. Though ECCO still uses shoes made in standard sizes, at least for now, it customises the midsole. This is the part of a shoe that fits between the outsole (the bottom of the shoe that comes into contact with the ground) and the insole (on which the foot rests). The midsole is the functional heart of a shoe, says Patrizio Carlucci, the head of ECCO’s Innovation Lab, which is in charge of the project. On the basis of the laser scans, of data from the shoe sensors and treadmill tests, and of information about the customer (someone who stands around a lot may require a softer feel than does another who walks everywhere), individualised left and right midsoles are engineered to suit the person concerned.

Once the midsole designs are complete, the computer file describing them is transferred to the 3D printers. These are made by a firm called German RepRap and are adapted to print a type of silicone developed by the Dow Chemical Company for this purpose. The printers build layers of silicone into hundreds of closely packed cells. The shape and size of each cell varies throughout the midsole, to provide the required distribution of support. When complete, the midsoles are inserted into a pair of shoes chosen by the customer.

Further trials of the production system, which ECCO calls Quant-U, will be held in W-21 later this year and at other stores around the world as the company continues to develop the process and take account of feedback from customers who take part. At the moment, ECCO is charging a premium of around €100 ($120) or so on top of the price of the shoes for the bespoke sole-designing service. If all goes well, Quant-U could be introduced in some stores for walk-in customers.

Other shoemakers are also trying new production techniques. Big names such as Nike and Adidas are printing some of the components that go into their high-end trainers, although individual customisation has largely been limited to making running shoes for top athletes.

Smaller concerns, too, are showing an interest in bespoke automation. In Milan Andrea and Francesco Carpineti, and their colleague Michele Luconi, are trying to blend the new with the old. Their startup, Design Italian Shoes (DIS), provides shoe shops with a device they call the Totem Touch Screen. Customers place their feet in the bottom of this device to have them scanned. They then use a touchscreen to select a style of shoe and to customise it, from colours to materials, types of sole and even the eyelets and laces. Some 50m combinations are available. Personal monograms and inscriptions can be added.

Instead of sending the design to a 3D-printer, DIS passes it to a group of artisan shoemakers in the “shoes valley” of Le Marche, a region in eastern Italy that is famous for its cobblers. Which craftsman a pair of shoes is assigned to depends on the style to be made, for each has his specific areas of expertise. He will then make the shoes by hand, using a pair of existing lasts that are the closest match available to the data from the Totem. The Carpineti brothers claim that the firm can, in this way, rustle up a pair of handmade Oxfords in as little as ten days, for about €360—less than a tenth of Lobb’s price. The company hopes to offer completely bespoke sizes eventually, using feet scans to create digital lasts, which would generate patterns for leather and other components of a shoe.

The company decided to adopt this marriage of high-tech and low-tech, says Andrea Carpineti, to help preserve shoemaking jobs in Le Marche. So far, 15 shoe shops in Europe have Totems installed, and he expects the devices to be in several hundred stores in China soon. One way or another, then, shoemakers are striding towards a bespoke future.