1.
by Gerald Flores
Technological innovations rarely, if at all, come from the golf division of major footwear brands. Newness usually comes out of running or basketball first, and then trickles into the other segments (often very) slowly. adidas Golf’s Director of Global Product Marketing Masun Denison isn’t shy about admitting to that fact.
“As the golf division, we’re the little person calling Germany like, ‘What do you have coming in the pipeline from the Adidas Innovations Team?’” he said, of working with the main offices on designing products. “We normally ask them what they’re working on, so we can potentially borrow it and make it right for golf.”
An example of one of those technologies is adidas Boost—a technology originally unveiled in running in 2013, and placed in golf shoes for the first time earlier this year.
However, things are about to change. This month, adidas Golf launched the sport’s first fully asymmetrical shoe. And for once, adidas’ broader innovations team is taking notes from the golf world.
Dubbed the Asym Energy Boost, the shoe’s left and right sides are built independently in order to guide a player’s weight transfer during a golf swing. At retail, shoes for right-handed and left-handed golfers are made separately.
The concept of using two totally different shoes isn’t just a first for golf, but for any sport. Bringing the product to life was a three-year research and development odyssey. Denison said adidas’ headquarters was even reluctant to sign off on spending the money on the project because golf is one of the company’s lowest volume drivers.
2.
“Normally, you do a mold for the outsole and just mirror it for the left and right because you get a discount on the mold that way,” he said. “But this one, we had two completely separate molds for the right hand and left hand. It was very expensive and probably the most expensive outsole we ever made.”
There were also challenges in design and production. adidas had to teach the factories how build the left and right shoes individually, a difficult adjustment for factories used to mass production.
“It was very complicated for our factories. They’re used to making one component on both shoes,” Denisun said. “The patterns and everything were so individualized, our factories who are more geared toward mass customers, mass offerings, and producing something simple had to really change their way of thinking to really build something dedicated like this.”
Adidas’ risk to bring forward the first asymmetric golf shoes has already paid off. It’s currently in the process of patenting the asymmetric technology not just in golf, but in every sport category. The brand is also in the midst of developing asymmetric sneakers for running and training activities like baseball. Denison said that we might see the first asymmetric runners as early as the 2016 Olympics.
“I think we’re at our best when we’re pulling from the parent company that gives us the best of what they’re working on,” he said. “But working on a shoe like this is just a like a complete 360.”
3.
Gerald Flores is the Editor-in-Chief of Sole Collector. You can follow him on Twitter here.
