Releasing your very own signature sneaker is about to become a whole lot easier.
Independent school Pensole Footwear Design Academy and crowdsourcing platform Rooy are on a mission to make people's dreams into reality. The two companies recently secured $4M in funding to launch a new platform for aspiring sneaker designers to launch their own products.
The new initiative is drawing comparisons to NYC startup Quirky, which helps inventors launch their products to the public.
"Say a designer has a great idea but does not know how the shoe can be made," Pensole Founder D'Wayne Edwards told Fast Company. "We will work with them to redesign their design to make it manufacturable. We will also conduct online classes that are competitions, leading to designs being made which will increase the quality of the products generated from Rooy Inc."
Edwards has over two decades of professional experience in the footwear industry and was a former design director for Jordan Brand.
On the new platform, the idea is simple: Designers submit their artwork to the platform and the community votes for the best idea. The designer of the winning submission will work directly with Pensole and Rooy to develop a sample that ultimately gets put into production.
There's no timeframe yet on the launch of the new platform, but aspiring designers might want to have their sketches ready to go in the meantime.
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[via Fast Company]
