Sole. Simple shoe, crazy canvas.

OK. Sole is a brand new shoe retail experience, which the customers can experience different materials and use them to make their own customized shoes. in Sole, everyone will become a designer.

Sole provides an exploratory experience of selecting unique materials and creating a tailored shoe.

People can experience different materials or even bring in appropriate material to make their custom shoe.

Sole's target audience is focused differently than other custom-product retails. Most of the custom products are expensive and could have certain limitation to buy. Yet, Sole wants to provide a more accessible product and service to more people and the traditional custom retails.

The demographic of Sole is focused on urban college student and office workers. They have the desire to try new and customized items. The age of them is around twenty to fifty years old.

I found that most of the custom shoe retails, including Mi Adidas and Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ are online, which limited the customer to experience the materials on their shoes. Those retailers also provide fewer choices of materials they can choose from.

The word, sole, is the base of a shoe, and it also can be used as a adjective meaning “one and only”. In Sole, each shoe is tailored only for the creator of it.

Enough said, here comes the pictures


this is the retail space


with out facade

people go down the ramp and test out their shoe size and shoe style. There are 3 style of white shoes and each one of them is on a row of display. Each row contains every shoe sizes. People pick the size and style that best fit them, then take the white shoes down the ramp.

people then touch and experience different materials. When they pick the materials they like, they can tear down pieces of the material through perforation, and put the pieces onto the shoes to see if they match.

After the customers are satisfied with their shoes, they can pay at the counter, and the shoes will arrive their house via mail.

Final presentation board. Click to enlarge.


Final Presentation.


After all, Sole combines clean white shoes and luscious materials, to create the shoes that are tailored only for you.

All quote by me, Evan Liao, in the final presentation.