Allbirds-Adidas Futurecraft.Footprint Shoe Executive: details, price, release date

The upper part of the new shoe is a mesh made of 70% recycled polyester and 30% Tencel, a cellulose fiber material made of wood ghost, which also appears in Allbirds Tree Runners. Like many other products in Adidas ’Terrex and Futurecraft lines, the new shoe only comes in pure white, as dyeing is also a process that uses a lot of energy.

The company sent me a pair of new running shoes to try on. I weighed a women’s shoe size 7.5 to 4.6 ounces, which was incredibly light; for comparison, my current favorite Hoka Clifton 7s weighs 8.1 ounces per shoe. Weight reduction has two goals. First, it increases the performance factor: runners can save energy if they don’t have to wear a big, small shoe on each foot. Second, it reduces the financial and environmental costs of manufacturing and shipping.

“A big part of the process was reducing weight,” says Sam Handy, vice president of design and race for Adidas. “Weight has a huge impact on production through shipments, materials and carbon input.”

In addition to exchanging materials with Adidas and Allbirds, they also changed the design of the shoe to support the foot without adding additional material. For example, instead of sewing additional panels to reinforce the top of the shoe, the companies used seams that are ventilated around the top to strengthen the toe, arch, and heel.

“Where another running shoe can have internal running support on the heel, we were able to do it in the direction of the embroidery,” says Jad Finck, vice president of innovation and sustainability at Allbirds. “You’re deleting an extra piece but finding another way to get into the fabric of the shoe.”

And of course, rather than ordinary Allbirds sneakers or everyday shoes, Futurecraft.Footprint has tested performance to Adidas standards with the stability of Adidas ’existing athletes. The first prototypes are now being rolled out, but Adidas plans to distribute them among athletes as footwear for recovery or training before the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

When we get normal people, Adidas will be raffling off a limited number of pairs to its Founders Club members. The shoes will go on sale in the fall in public. Company representatives say we can expect it to cost as much as ordinary Allbirds or Adidas running shoes, but no exact pricing details have been released since then.

Better paths ahead

Since Adidas and Allbirds were able to send me a prototype pair for testing, I took Futurecraft.Footprint on some 3 to 5 mile routes in a few days.

The prototypes are very attractive, very light and as amazing in size. Adidas shoes are usually larger in size than other shoes I’ve tested; if you normally take the measure of inflammation, you don’t have to do it here. The straight white stitching is not unnoticed in the upper whispers, and the tongue has perforations for better ventilation on hot days. I haven’t been able to test them in the long run, but I would be very interested to see if the reinforced stitches around the toe and heel hold up over time.

Unfortunately, they are not suitable for me. The arch supports in the middle of the lightstrike sole do not fit or fit my arches properly. The Lightstrike midsole is one of the most popular Adidas performance shoe lines, so if you love Adizero running shoes, you’ll probably love these.

The most interesting aspect of Futurecraft.Footprint was that Adidas started to study different projects to deal with sustainability and climate change. Some may be more successful than others, but it took the Adidas and Allbirds about 12 months to get from the drawing board to the finished shoe. The mark indicating the weight – written “2.94 kg” on the side of the shoe – is also scratched by hand, suggesting that this is also just a step in the process.

The fact that a few athletic clothing companies (even two big names like this) are presenting carbon emission reduction projects means that they are just a showcase of a much bigger problem. But the high speed of completion of this project suggests that we can change the way we manufacture consumer products much faster than we think.

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