Kristin Myers: Now, every shoe you have ever owned was built for a size and not for you. Size ten. Size eight and a half. That’s a number that stands in for a foot, and it was made months before you wanted it, in a factory that had to guess how many people were going to buy it. Now, my guest thinks both of those things are about to end. His company scans your foot, designs a shoe with artificial intelligence, and then 3D prints it after you order it. But first, let’s take a look at the company. The road from an idea to the opening bell starts right now.
For generations, buying shoes has worked pretty much the same way. You pick a style, you pick a size, and you hope it fits. But Ben Weiss thinks the problem isn’t your foot, it’s the shoe size. Weiss is the founder and CEO of Syntilay, a footwear startup betting that AI and 3D printing can completely change how shoes are designed, made and sold.
The idea? Don’t mass produce a shoe and ask millions of different feet to fit inside it. Instead, scan your feet and build the shoe around you. Now, Syntilay says this technology can capture more than 5,000 data points from a customer’s foot, and that information is used to create a custom fit, accounting for things a traditional shoe size can miss, including arch height and even differences between your left and right foot.
Then comes the other half of the [unclear: “event”]. AI helps design the footwear. 3D printing makes it. And instead of manufacturing thousands of pairs before knowing who will buy them, Syntilay can produce shoes on demand. And Weiss has some serious footwear experience in his corner. Reebok founder Joe Foster is an advisor to the company, and now Syntilay is taking that technology into sports.
The company teamed up with NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Owens on the T.O. Reset, a custom 3D printed recovery shoe built specifically around the movements and impact of pickleball. But this is about more than one shoe. The bigger bet is that footwear itself is ready for a technology reset. So here’s the challenge, [unclear: “consensually”]: take custom 3D printed shoes from a cool piece of technology to a product millions of people actually want to wear. And if every foot is different, could AI and 3D printing eventually make the traditional shoe size obsolete? From Startup to Stock Exchange, Syntilay founder and CEO Ben Weiss is next.
Kristin Myers: Joining us now here at the desk is Ben Weiss, CEO of Syntilay. Ben, thank you so much for joining us.
Ben Weiss: Great to be here with you.
Kristin Myers: So you launched what you describe as the first commercially available AI designed shoe. That sounds self-explanatory, but what does that actually mean in practice? We actually have the shoe right here at the desk for people to see.
Ben Weiss: Well, what we wanted to do is really transform how footwear is designed, developed and then produced. If you think about shoes, you look at how they’re made, they really haven’t changed in 200 years. They’re made the same way. But everything else around us is getting smart. We’ve got electric cars, we have autonomous cars, we have a smartwatch, smart glasses. But what about shoes? Shoes have just been forgotten about. And so we really wanted to do something different in the space and improve people’s lives in footwear.
So we started with how do we design shoes in a way that is more cost effective, so we can get new talent to the space, new voices in the space that haven’t been able to express themselves, with generative AI. We were able to achieve that, and we can launch shoes in three months, fully commercially available from scratch, instead of a typical 18 month time frame. And then with 3D printing, we can finally get rid of the shoe size. We haven’t ever changed the standard sizing system in hundreds of years. But we did have custom with cobblers before the 1800s. In that period, you would go get a pretty premium, custom made shoe. And now we’re bringing custom back, because with AI we can just use an algorithm to fully modify the inside of the shoe, and it’s done for everybody individually without all that manual labor.
Kristin Myers: So it’s a whole new world for the 21st century, if you can call it that.
Ben Weiss: I think it’s a little bit of a cooler way to say it, but sure.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so walk me through. I want to buy a [unclear: “central issue”]. Walk me through the process from A to Z. What do I scan my foot with? What happens next? Where am I involved in the process, and where do you guys take over?
Ben Weiss: Sure. So generally we have two different processes today. One process is online. So when you go to our website, you order a shoe like any other type of shoe you bought, but then you get an email afterwards asking if you’d like to scan your feet, and you can opt into that, and you simply take two photos with your phone camera. You orient them so you’ve got your feet like this, and then you flip the direction. And from there we gather 5,000 data points, and the entire insole is modified to the 3D models we get of each individual foot. So each shoe is made to each individual foot, to lots of different data points.
Then when it comes to retail, we have a spot at a store called [unclear: “tomorrow TM, RW”] in Times Square at 220 West 42nd Street, where people come in. They scan on an in-person foot scanner, which is more precise than online. We gather the same data, but it’s higher quality: individual toe shapes, heel structure, things like that. And then we estimate the insole and we mail it to you from there. And that was our proof of concept. Now we’re integrating into thousands of stores around the world. If you go into a local sporting store, there’s a good chance they’ve got a foot scanner used to recommend shoes. We’re pushing out software and scaling. This is the first tech shoe brand to many of these foot scanners to now offer custom 3D printed shoes.
Kristin Myers: I have so many questions that arise from this. So first and foremost, you said that there were two ways for someone to get a shoe, so they can choose to scan it. But that makes it sound as if they don’t have to scan their foot, which would then mean they’re using the same number for the shoe size.
Ben Weiss: That’s where it is right now. We are ultimately going to get rid of the option of putting in a standard size as a reference, because I just want everybody to get custom. But that was phase one of the system that we built.
Kristin Myers: Speaking about the scanning, especially an in-person scan, I’m curious to know if that in-person scan is also accounting for the fact that some people have supinated, and you know what I mean? The way that their foot fits inside of the shoe. Because I first thought, oh, this might take away someone’s need for orthotics, if the inside of the shoe is custom fit to their foot. Is that accurate to say or not?
Ben Weiss: Quite. We don’t really make claims that we’re replacing the orthotic, but we are providing a better experience of the shoe. We have had some preliminary studies done that patients that usually have an orthotic did not feel they needed an orthotic anymore. But there will always be, I think, a use case for the orthotic for certain types of shoes, like in the performance world, stuff like that. But we’re providing a new experience of what footwear is like, and the majority of the population could benefit from a much better fit experience, from an orthotic-like experience, taking some of those properties. And now we’re building that into the shoe and actually making it at a price point that’s accessible. This isn’t a $1,000 shoe like typical custom.
Kristin Myers: How much is this shoe? This one here.
Ben Weiss: This one here that we launched with NFL Hall of Fame athlete Terrell Owens around pickleball recovery is a $189 sneaker, fully custom to each individual foot from the scan. It’s never even been possible to have a sub $200 custom made shoe. It was sci-fi. Now it’s reality.
Kristin Myers: I know it’s custom with the scan. Is it also custom in the design? Can people change what colors they want? What kind of customization happens there?
Ben Weiss: It’s a good question. It’s something we think about quite a lot, and I get asked a lot about this. We do want people to be able to make their own designs at some point. It’s a little more complicated than just generating an image or a 3D model, because you actually have to make this shoe printable, right? We’re working to get there. We’re going to get there at some point. But right now you can get a pre-made style that you get to modify individually to your feet. And so we’ve got lots of content creators, lots of brands that are all working with us, making their own designs, brands and creators that you know and love, and then you get the opportunity to finally wear their shoes.
Kristin Myers: I have to ask, any creators you can share? You mentioned Terrell Owens. I’m curious to know who else is on the slate.
Ben Weiss: We have a bunch of different people. Most obviously are not announced, but we’re working with all different types of companies and brands. So, for example, Tomb Raider is launching a shoe with us, the popular video game and IP there. And that’s based on the main character’s boot that she actually wears in the game. We took the file and we’re adapting it to a shoe. We have a lot of different athletes. We have a skateboarding recovery shoe coming out with one of the greatest skateboarders of all time, Bob Burnquist. And there’s a ton more. We’ve got TikTok dancer personalities, the Fisher family on YouTube, lots of different types of people.
Kristin Myers: So I want to ask you, because this shoe doesn’t exist until someone orders it, explain what that does to the business, because inventory is usually a really big problem for most companies, especially footwear companies.
Ben Weiss: It’s like the biggest problem in footwear, which is why you also don’t really see many new footwear companies. Probably the only brand we can remember that’s been added to the major footwear stores in recent years has been On. It really hasn’t been anybody else. And part of the issue is the barrier to entry is just so high. You’ve got these major molding costs: every shoe size requires a multi-thousand dollar mold, and every single mold you open up is a 1,000 pair minimum order quantity commitment. With this, we’re actually enabling shoes to be made only when somebody orders them, which means we can finally solve the footwear waste issue. It could be up to 2 billion pairs a year that are just discarded, off of the 25 billion or so we make yearly, and we only print it if someone orders. So we don’t even have to make those shoes, and we can finally get rid of this massive amount of waste that happens in the category. So print on demand, I believe, is the future of the whole space in general. And as we grow, we’re going to get it to hopefully same day fulfillment, from three weeks where we’re at now.
Kristin Myers: So how does a shoe normally get made? First the designer sketches it, and then a factory builds a mold, a physical tool that costs real money and takes weeks. And then the brand has to decide months in advance how many pairs to make and in which sizes. If you guess high, you’re sitting on inventory that you’ll have to discount or destroy. And if you guess too low, you’ve left money on the shelf. And every pair is built to a size, a number that assumes your left foot and your right foot are the same. And for most people, they aren’t. 3D printing changes the sequence. There’s no mold, no minimum order. There’s nothing made until somebody buys it. The inventory stops being a warehouse and starts being a file.
We’re back now with Ben Weiss, CEO of Syntilay. Ben, thanks so much for sticking around. So I want to talk about some of the partnerships that you have. You print with Zellerfeld. So you design and you sell, and then somebody else is actually manufacturing it. Do you think of Syntilay as a brand, or do you think of it more as a manufacturer?
Ben Weiss: We view ourselves as a brand that is making custom 3D printed shoes possible, so we’re not trying to be the manufacturer. There are many different manufacturers. We primarily work with Zellerfeld. We have a couple others that we work with that know how to print shoes, and that’s something that’s been achieved. There are lots of foot scanning companies that are used to recommend shoes. And so what we’re doing is connecting both and building the technology behind that to make it all possible, to really scale this as a real concept, from innovative designs around a category we’ve been building in footwear called Recovery by Sport. Like this shoe here, the T.O. shoe is a pickleball recovery shoe designed for before or after you [unclear: “can pin”] pickleball, not for when you’re on the actual court. So we’re building smarter shoes that are based on how you move in that sport, to reduce impact before or after.
Kristin Myers: It feels very, I’m going to lift it so everyone can see, it feels very comfortable. Squishy.
Ben Weiss: If people don’t really realize how far 3D printed production has come, people think 3D printed shoes are hard. They are very soft, very flexible, foamy, comfortable, like what you would expect from a normal shoe. So we don’t see the need to reinvent how 3D printed shoes are produced. The question is, why are you not wearing a 3D printed shoe today? What’s the value to the customer? We believe it’s custom. That’s the value, regardless of whether you know it’s printed or not. And now we’re scaling that idea of custom for everyone, using existing production with foot scanners, building all that goes in between.
Kristin Myers: Well, you mentioned you’re going to maybe one day go to heels, because that was my question to you: when are ladies’ shoes going to be coming to you? So I want to ask you about your advisor. Joe Foster founded Reebok, as I just mentioned, one of your advisors. I’m curious to know what he has taught you or told you about starting a shoe company in the 70s versus what doing something like that is like today.
Ben Weiss: Well, Joe is a living legend. He’s one of two people alive in the world today that’s taken a shoe brand from an idea, as the founder, to the best selling in the category. It’s just him and Phil Knight. And he wrote an amazing book on his life called Shoemaker that I highly recommend you read, where he talks about that journey, from being unable to afford much of any equipment to finally figuring out how to scale this, when running stores didn’t need another option. And he was very clever. He found a lot of white space along the way. He created women’s yoga and aerobics shoes. That’s what took Reebok to a billion in sales in six years. When they entered the US, nobody was making soft, leather, affordable aerobics shoes. So that kind of thinking is what I really value. And he’s been an incredible advisor. Same with Julie Foster, his wife. They’ve given me amazing advice along the way, and it’s the best advice you can possibly get. There’s no one better to get it from.
One of the biggest principles I got from them was this: when you look at a shoe, you need to see something different about it. A visible technology that makes a difference, without having to explain to the customer, because, okay, this phone looks the same as every other phone, but it does something different, right? And that’s what led to a lot of success for Reebok, and it’s something we’re embodying here.
Kristin Myers: So I want to ask you about creators. We were chatting a little bit before, and you mentioned it’s super hard to get grand deals with shoe companies. So what does it take for a creator to launch a shoe with you guys?
Ben Weiss: Yeah, so we’re really different in the way we approach this. I don’t think there’s any major YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, social-first personality that has a signature shoe on the market today. There are lots of athletes, but pretty much the entire footwear market when it comes to signature footwear is just supported by North American basketball athletes. Basketball’s big, obviously. But you have the world of lifestyle creators. There are more creators on these social platforms than there are top athletes in every professional sport in the world, by many times over. And they’re selling merch. They’re selling hats, shirts, shorts and hoodies.
So we want to give many of those people, as well as many athletes that haven’t had a chance, the ability to make their own designs. That’s done over a couple of strategy calls, coming up with the creative direction, making the 2D concepts with generative AI, moving to 3D modeling, sometimes we generate the 3D model, and then a couple months later making a physical prototype. And creators get to just weave it into content organically and build something that they love that embodies their brand. And now a young person can feel like they can be like whoever they want in life, because they can wear their creator’s shoe. If they want to be a YouTuber, they can wear their favorite YouTuber’s shoe. It’s not just “be like Mike” because I want to play basketball now. It’s be like this DJ, be like this Twitch streamer, etc.
Kristin Myers: Expanding the concept, right? I was thinking, [unclear: “Kai’s not my. I don’t know if you ever know with him, I don’t know.”] Okay, so I want to talk about the competition first. Let’s talk about it on the price point. As you mentioned, $189 for a shoe. It’s 190 for a slide. Now, for most folks that’s still a fairly premium price point. What are you hearing or seeing in terms of why someone would want to buy a Syntilay, which is a brand that they might not know as well, compared to buying Nike or Adidas or Reebok?
Ben Weiss: So right now we range from $89 to $229 in terms of products we can create, from flip flops to slides at $119, to sneakers at $189, to boots around the $200 range. So we’re a little more premium. We are, as we scale, going to get it down to very similar pricing, if not the same as traditional shoes, and then it just becomes about the value add. Every brand has to start somewhere, right? At some point nobody knew what Nike was. At some point nobody knew what Reebok was. But Nike led the North American running track. Reebok had multiple trends that they led around backing women’s sports. Every brand has had its own area that’s made the brand. And so we’re focusing on our own area, which is custom made to fit you, and the value of custom. People understand, if you go get a suit today, you likely get it tailored. Everyone gets a custom suit to an extent. The value out of custom is there. It’s now just about scaling it, putting it in front of the right people, which is what we’re doing through foot scanning machines, through different partners. And then people will start to resonate with Syntilay as a brand and opt into that, because they want custom and no one else is offering custom.
Kristin Myers: What happens if the scan is wrong? I take a photo of my foot with my phone. What happens if it’s off?
Ben Weiss: So we offer a free reprint guarantee, where we’ll give you another pair if there’s an issue and you just give us fit feedback, which happens once in a while, but overall it’s very rare. And that just helps customers be comfortable with getting into something new and different. But the foot scanning is really good. These are scanning machines that have been used by millions and millions of people, that are incredibly precise. And we’ve run tests down to less than a millimeter, very, very precise. So the odds that something like that can happen are very low. And as we continue to scale this and grow, it’s just going to keep going lower and lower.
Kristin Myers: I have to ask, before I go to my last question: Nike already does 3D printing, and they do custom shoes, but they haven’t gone fully after it yet. I wonder if you worry about the bigger, established brands really going after this space.
Ben Weiss: I think it’s a good question. The way I look at this space is that we’re not a typical footwear brand. We’re the first technology shoe company. And so the way we think about this is just entirely different from the way these traditional brands think about footwear. Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Puma, they’re all born and bred in athletics. Many of them started in running and pivoted towards another sport. Basketball, let’s say, is their primary sport. Their DNA is in the athletes. We’re focused on lifestyle, casual, recovery, which in general is a very different approach, as a first priority. So there’s a different DNA there.
And when it comes to custom in general, Nike’s done 3D printed shoes, Adidas has done it, Puma has done printed shoes. The difference is what we’re building to make this a reality at scale with custom, and how we’re doing that and what goes behind that. And there may be brands that wind up copying us as we establish the concept more and more. We’ve got great customers now, like Shaquille O’Neal, who is my second biggest customer today. He bought 30 pairs from us.
Kristin Myers: I don’t know what he did to my feet, but I don’t want to take him off.
Ben Weiss: Right. So that’s not the biggest buy order, but also biggest in terms of size. And he’s an incredible customer. He’s awesome. Definitely appreciative to have him as a customer. But as we continue to scale this, there may be copycat brands, but when you combine it with this lifestyle-first approach, with custom fit, with the way we’re doing custom fit, and all the ideas around recovery for your sport and where we’ll go with that, I think we’re going to stand out quite a lot. And we’re moving like a technology company. If you want to make a shoe, traditionally that’s a two year process. Everything these companies have been built around is a two year process. We’re able to launch shoes in months, in three months from scratch. We could put out seven or eight designs before they put out one.
Kristin Myers: So I have to ask you, do you ever think about going public? We are on the floor of the stock exchange. You ever think about ringing that bell?
Ben Weiss: The goal of the company at some point is to go public. As we grow this, as our customer base grows, we’re going to have a lot of young individuals as a part of the brand, wearing the products and wearing the shoes, and it’s really going to mean something to them. They’re going to be connected with some of their favorite personalities and brands in ways that they were never able to connect with them before. And so we want them ultimately to be able to participate in the brand as well, from a different standpoint, from an ownership standpoint. And also, as we expand, we will likely need more capital, too. So there are lots of benefits to doing it, and at some point we do want to do that. The question is when. We’ve got a bit more to go in terms of going from the proof of concept and initial scale to rapid scale, thousands and thousands of stores, and really disrupting the market. And as we get there, that’s when we can revisit the conversation.
Kristin Myers: And you better come back when you do. Thank you so much. Ben Weiss, CEO of Syntilay.
