Imprimalia 3D Shoes for 3D printing: a business with a 50% profit

The prestigious newspaper 'The New York Times' has dedicated a report to the company Feetz, which describes itself as "the footwear of the future", in which it concludes that it can replicate its business model and earn a profit of at least 50%.

In the case of this company, its manufacturing plant is made up exclusively of a hundred 3D printers that constantly hum while printing one shoe after another.

Each machine has been named after a character from the cartoons: Wonder Woman or Scooby Doo, for example. And while outrageous, the 3-D printers, costing $5,000 per unit, are there to drastically change retail on a massive scale by making shoe manufacturing cheaper.

"We're the technologists coming in to help," said Lucy Beard, CEO of Feetz, which has been operating in San Diego for two years. "I saw 3D printers in a magazine and thought, 'custom and mass orders'." Each machine can be reset to make different sizes and it takes 12 hours to make a pair. The company only has 15 employees and has only recently started making its own shoes.

But Beard, 38, imagines there will come a day when shoes are printed in an hour. Since there is little labor to pay for and shipping costs are low, plus no back-ordered inventory, Feetz's profit is 50% on each pair, he added.

Ordering is done online, where customers can download an app, take pictures of their feet with their smartphones, and create a 3D model. The shoes, which start at $199, are made from recycled materials and are heavily padded for comfort.

With the rise of new technologies like smartphones and 3D printers, fashion industry startups like Feetz are changing the ways fashion products are ordered, made, and sold.

Like Beard, many founders of these companies have no background in fashion. Rather, they see technology as the answer to off-the-shelf, mass-produced goods that are increasingly shunned by millennials.

Traditionally, manufacturing is the most expensive part of the supply chain. Creating goods in small batches is difficult and expensive. Most are manufactured outside of the United States, and shipping adds time and cost to the process. So even "fast fashion" can take about six weeks to hit the shelves.

Although alteration is a hot idea in the world of technology, not everyone is convinced that this type of innovation is going to revolutionize fashion. James Dion, a retail consultant in Chicago, said he perceives on-demand fashion as a "passing" trend, with limited appeal.

The industry has already had one of its first flops: Tinker Tailor, which made custom-made luxury women's clothing, closed last year because its funding to sustain the business ran out.

It's still the early days of 3D printing, said Uli Becker, a former Reebok CEO and an investor in Feetz. The offerings are not very diversified and are limited to basic goods. And it is not yet possible to print the item of clothing.

However, he sees great potential in three-dimensional printing. "This is the equivalent of a 1980s cell phone, a briefcase that puts a brick in your ear," he said. "In the future, we'll walk into showrooms, select what we want, and then order it online or print the product ourselves," he said.

Custom shoemakers like Feetz will also make trying on shoes in the shoe store obsolete, experts say. "In 10 years, physically, you won't try on a pair of shoes," Beard said.

The promise is making Silicon Valley take note. "We've been looking for companies that use advanced technology," said Vijit Sabnis, a venture partner at Khosla Ventures and an investor in Feetz.

In the end, it will be robots and 3D printers that make these goods. And they will be done in small places, rather than large plants. "We all want to save on shipping costs and rethink the supply chain," he said.

Teespring created its own manufacturing systems in a factory in northern Kentucky that used to make helicopters. Of his 400 employees, 40 are on the engineering team building proprietary technology for rapid, small-batch printing of T-shirts. Profit margins are slim, Williams acknowledges, but they're rising.

"Anyone can bring a creative idea to life without having to be a retail expert," said Lars Dalgaard, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. So consumers can now express themselves in a way "that has never been possible before," he added.

Khosla Ventures has also invested in fashion startups that use technology other than 3D printing. One is Shoes of Prey, a website that allows shoppers to choose colors and styles of women's shoes for under $200. Another investment is MTailor, which makes shirts—starting at $69—and men's suits on demand. measurement, which he takes with a smartphone.

Teespring, founded in 2011, shipped more than 20 million custom-made T-shirts last year. It allows anyone to design them with messages related to topics like coffee, yoga, and football, and then sell them to their customers.

"We're a technology company that makes T-shirts," said Walker Williams, 27, the CEO of Teespring, who started the company with Evan Stites-Clayton, a friend from Brown University.

"The future of fashion is in the smaller brands that have those kinds of customer relationships." In the end, they plan to offer another type of custom-made clothing. Venture capitalists including Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, have backed them to raise $56 million.