3 Minutes A Shoe: This Running Brand Just Broke Footwear’s 50-Year Manufacturing Rule

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(SeaPRwire) –   By: Lucas Caldwell

Most big sportswear brands talk automation as a minor tweak to old lines. They bolt robots onto existing labor-heavy processes to cut a few cents off per unit. On isn’t doing that. Its new LightSpray 3-minute shoe upper process was built for robots from the start. It doesn’t just trim costs. It rewrites the entire rulebook of how athletic shoes get made.

The official numbers from On’s Zurich lab tell the core story. Traditional running shoe construction cuts, stitches, and glues up to 200 separate components. It needs 200 to 300 hours of human work across development and production. LightSpray cuts that down to seven total parts, eliminates all that human labor, and builds a shoe upper in three minutes flat. On filed 200 patents across footwear and manufacturing last year alone.

On isn’t a new garage startup anymore. Founded in 2010 out of a garden hose prototype, it hit over 3 billion Swiss francs in annual revenue. It listed on the NYSE in 2021 with a $15 billion market cap. It still trails giants Nike ($46 billion annual revenue) and Adidas ($29 billion) by a wide margin. But it’s the fastest growing challenger in the global athletic footwear space, with Asia-Pacific as its fastest growing region at 17% of global sales.

The whole industry has been tied to low-cost labor concentrated in Asia for decades. Brands got stuck relying on huge production runs in far-flung factories to cut costs. That means long lead times, overproduction of unpopular sizes, and constant vulnerability to labor shortages or trade shocks. On’s robot-first model breaks all that. Robots can switch between shoe sizes mid-production, no retooling needed.

This isn’t just about cutting labor costs, either. It lets On build smaller factories much closer to its core markets. That cuts shipping time and inventory holding costs drastically. It also removes the biggest barrier to faster iteration on new designs. Right now, most brands wait months to get new prototypes made from Asian contract factories. On could turn around a new design in days from a local robotic facility.

Within a decade, half of all premium athletic footwear manufacturing will shift to regional robotic micro-factories.

Author bio: Lucas Caldwell, a tech opinion leader covering industrial innovation with millions of followers on X/Twitter.