Finally caught some breath..

..from last week’s adventures!

Cologne → Porto → Guimarães → Felgueiras → Sao João da Madeira → Porto → Cologne → Mannheim and finally back to Cologne.

And this was only Monday to Wednesday.

Let’s break that down, shall we?

Professionals at work 📊

As mentioned the last time I wrote to you, we were planning our Portugal trip to meet all our partners.

Speaking about physical products in presence boosts your efficiency insanely. Especially when the product you want to become reality is different to what you usually do.

In our case, having a working prototype and let everyone try it in real life helped a lot to let our vision become a real life product. At the same time everyone could experience persistent problems in real life and actively help to fix it with their great experience.

From Knitting, to Moulding, to Manufacturing 🪡

Knitting

Shoe uppers can be knitted! Just as your favourite cardigan, they can be knitted into form to be mounted to soles. We use a natural and recycled fibre that is anti-odour and breathable. The full upper is made in one piece, reducing waste and additional production steps, keeping emissions low!

Moulding

Creating tools for making outsoles is a craft in itself. Great engineering is required to allow designs to become reality. In our case there were numerous difficulties, where precision and experience is required to translate a 3D printed sole to a moulded sole. Moulds can be compared to your waffle iron at home. A liquid is poured into a form, and after it has gotten solid, needs to be removed again. Now we were able to clear all difficulties and we finally have approved our first mould. We can’t wait to see the results!

Manufacturing

In the factory, all ingredients are assembled. We aim to offer highest comfort and durability, and keeping the complexity at a low at the same time. Compared to a traditional shoe, we want to keep the number of different parts and materials as little as possible. This would allow a much higher efficiency in disassembly and recycling, another big goal of ours!

Together we went through many different approaches how to realise this. We agreed on multiple approaches and will test it in the next round of prototypes.

What’s coming next? 🔜

We are desperately waiting to receive the next round of prototypes, before we enter our campaigning stage for our launch! Exciting times ahead.

Meanwhile we are working on our marketing department, rolling out content and launching our website.

Keep an eye out on www.modifox.com - Our new page is launching any day now.

Until then!

Devin

Tobi