At the Geekwire Summit, Nike COO Eric Sprunk dropped a bomb on us about the future of the footwear industry. He kept it a bit vague, but in essence he said that soon, you're going to be able to print your own shoes in your own home with your own 3D printer. There's absolutely no way this will go poorly.
This scenario is straight out of Blade Runner or some shit. You download a template from Nike (possibly custom-sized to fit your specific foot) and then either have the design printed in your own home or at a nearby Nike store where you can go pick it up a few hours later. Sprunk said, "Do I envision a future where we might still own the file from an IP perspective—you can’t just have anyone making a Nike product—and have it manufactured in your own home or we do it for you at our store? Yeah, that’s not that far away."
With technology like Flyknit, which essentially does that exact same process except in the safety of a Nike factory, it definitely seems like a reality in the near future. With 3D printing already making waves with all the cool shit you can make in your own home, it's only a matter of time before it crosses over into footwear and apparel with the same levels of efficiency. Subsequently, you can probably imagine how much easier it will be for fledgling fashion labels to get off the ground too. What a time to be alive.
You can watch Sprunk's full talk from the summit here, his comments about 3D printing starting around the 30-minute mark.
