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How Instagram became the perfect platform for streetwear resellers
Instagram isn't just about pictures of food. Search certain hashtags -- #yeezysforsale, for example -- and you'll find countless images of the most in-demand streetwear. Behind those photos are resellers who have turned the social network into a platform for buying, selling and trading items. This is where those coveted Yeezy sneakers end up for resale, often in the thousands of dollars. The same goes for limited-edition Air Jordans or clothing from Supreme, a New York City-based brand that's taking a particular section of the fashion world by storm.
Adidas tries to make buying Yeezys fair but misses the mark
Buying Yeezy Boost sneakers online is tough. It comes down to this: Supply cannot meet demand. The shortage is so acute that if you don't buy them at launch for retail price -- between $200 and $350, depending on the model -- you'll have to pay upwards of $2,000 on eBay or another site to get your hands on a pair. Reselling Yeezys has become a business, and both Adidas and Nike (with its retro Jordans) are turning to tech to make the shopping experience fair and safe for everyone.
Adidas designed a wearable for PE class
Last year, Adidas made a commitment to help young students stay fit and healthy. This idea was born after the sportswear giant teamed up with Interactive Health Technologies, a firm that provides a connected fitness-assessment platform to schools in the US. Together, they created The Spirt Challenge, which encourages students from kindergarten through high school to be active. In exchange for doing that, they get rewarded prizes such as apparel, equipment and scholarships. And now Adidas is taking its efforts one step further, introducing a wrist-worn wearable designed for physical education classrooms.
Adidas looks to phone cases for its new laceless boot
Technology may have changed the way soccer (or as the locals call it, football) is officiated, but it also affects how the game is played. Professionals' vitals are constantly monitored to identify areas of improvement and even the choice of footwear can have a significant impact on how a player affects a match. Adidas has spent many years, and likely millions of Euros, redefining the football boot, adding and removing elements to give players more control on the pitch. This time, the German sportswear giant has decided to ditch laces altogether, debuting the Ace 16+ PureControl: a laceless football boot that is partly crafted from the same material used in smartphone cases.
Virgin Galactic taps fashion brand Y-3 for space suit designs
If you set out to do something incredible, you should do it looking your best. For Virgin Galactic, the commercial spaceflight venture from Richard Branson, that means teaming up with fashion brand Y-3 to create apparel for its future pilots, astronauts and on-the-ground team operations members. In case you're not familiar, Y-3 is a collaboration between Adidas and Yohji Yamamoto, a decorated and well-respected Japanese designer.
Adidas Futurecraft 3D shows the potential of 3D-printed shoes
3D printing is far from being a novel manufacturing technique, but it wasn't until recently that we started seeing the benefits of it on a grander scale. Organs and prosthetics? Check. Clothing? Sure. 3D-printed footwear? Now we have those, too. Enter the Adidas Futurecraft 3D, a running shoe made partially with 3D-printed materials. Although the midsole is the only 3D-printed piece so far, the company's prototype still gives us a glimpse at what shoes might look like in the near future.
Adidas has a 'Speedfactory' in Germany staffed by robots
Adidas, like most big companies, brought most of its production to China and other Asian countries in recent years. Now, it wants to bring production back closer to its German headquarters in order to cut down on shipping costs and be able to restock shoes more quickly, so the corporation built a factory in the country -- one staffed mostly by robots. This facility called the "Speedfactory" will start by making 500 pairs of running shoes for the brand in early 2016. From what we can tell, these are new models with machine-knitted uppers and springy, bubble-filled polyurethane foam soles. There will still be around 10 people helping the manufacturing process during the factory's pilot phase, but it will eventually be fully autonomous.
Adidas uses plastic ocean waste to create a 3D-printed shoe
Back in June, Adidas revealed a shoe made almost entirely from recycled ocean waste. That product marked the beginning of a partnership between the sportswear firm and Parley, an organization trying to combat ocean pollution worldwide. Now, Adidas is taking this one step further: its new design features a 3D-printed midsole created out of recycled polyester and gillnets, a wall of netting typically used to catch fish. The shoe's upper part was manufactured with ocean plastic materials as well, Adidas says, making its concept footwear a complete eco-friendly package.
Runtastic Results wants to be the P90X of mobile apps
There are currently a total of 15 Runtastic apps available across iOS, Android and Windows Phone. But the Austrian startup, recently acquired by sportswear giant Adidas, doesn't want to stop there. Today, it is introducing Results, an application that focuses solely on body training. This is Runtastic's version of the popular P90X fitness program, designed for the mobile era and to complement its other fitness-friendly software. Even though the app's available at no cost on iOS and Android, a premium, $50-per-year membership is going to unlock a dynamic 12-week workout plan. Here, you will get support from the Runtastic community, a personal nutrition guide and more than 120 exercise videos -- those, by the way, have been shot at 6K resolution, making them easier on the eye.
Adidas' Fit Smart wearable now tracks more of your fitness data
Software updates can breathe new life into existing hardware, and that's what's happening today with the Fit Smart. Introduced last year, this wrist-worn wearable has been able to measure burned calories, heart rate, distance covered, pace and steps since day one. But now Adidas will let you keep track of all those fitness stats using the Train and Run app, which is available for iOS and Android. Previously, Fit Smart and its companion application focused on coaching for workouts, training plans and monitoring your heart rate. By adding these features, people who own the device can start tracking data to set daily and weekly goals -- similar to Nike's FuelBand SE or Jawbone's Up3. We're not sure why it took Adidas over a year to bring such useful functionality to the Fit Smart, but at least it's finally here.
The humble beginnings and ambitious future of 3D printing
Consumer-focused 3D printing has been all the rage in the past several years, and while Yeezy may be apprehensive, it's putting the power of manufacturing into the hands of the people. The concept of three-dimensional reproduction isn't as new as you may think; various methods were being employed as early as the 1800s. From the 1950s until the early aughts, it's primarily been used in experimental or industrial applications due to the high costs involved. But when the RepRap project went open-source and MakerBot targeted the consumer market with more affordable machines, things began to change. This week we take a quick look at some milestones in 3D printing's development and see how it's progressing in the modern age.
Nike and Adidas turn to tech to make sneaker shopping safer
I recently bought an online shopping cart from a 16-year-old on Twitter. And when I say "an online shopping cart," I mean it: In exchange for $140, I received a login code to Nike's site that guaranteed me a pair of highly coveted sneakers, the "Chicago" Air Jordan 1s. That code was won through a Twitter-based raffle, a system Nike has started testing for limited edition releases; I had entered myself, but wasn't lucky enough to have my name drawn. Instead, while sadly browsing the social network to see how many people were chosen, I came across a young kid from New Mexico who had been picked and wasn't interested in purchasing the shoes. I reached out to him; we followed each other on Twitter; and, after vetting my character over direct messages to make sure I wasn't a scammer, he agreed to sell his "ticket" to me. It was bizarre, considering I still had to pay the $160-plus-tax retail price for the footwear. But, nowadays, it's the kind of thing you have to do to get Jordans. My other option was to find them on eBay or Amazon and shell out $400 to $500 -- more than twice as much as the original MSRP.
Adidas Futurecraft 3D: A running shoe made with 3D-printed materials
While Kanye West is worried about people 3D-printing shoes at home, his contractor Adidas believes the technology will play a major role in the future of footwear. (West designs the Yeezy shoe and clothing line for the Three-Stripes brand.) To show this, Adidas today introduced Futurecraft 3D, a running shoe made with a 3D-printed midsole which can be tailored to your foot -- down to the cushioning needs. While this is a conceptual prototype, the company does emphasize it's still a real statement of intent, noting it has developed proprietary 3D printing tech to deliver the product in the future. "Imagine walking into an Adidas store, running briefly on a treadmill and instantly getting a 3D-printed running shoe," Adidas says, "this is the ambition of the Adidas 3D-printed midsole."
Runtastic takes on Withings with 'Moment' analog fitness watch
Runtastic may have started as a training log app, but it soon progressed to putting its badge on running watches and accessories. The Orbit was possibly the company's most confident step into the world of wearables, and today it's making another with the "proper watch" Moment activity tracker. The Moment logs all the basics you'd expect from a fitness tracker: steps, distance, time active, calories burned and sleep patterns, along with a dial on the watch face showing progress towards your goal. Like Withings' Activité and Pop devices, the Moment's analog styling extends to running on a regular watch battery, so it won't need daily/weekly charging. This means no annoying ports, too, which helps keep things nice and sealed -- waterproof to 300 feet by Runtastic's reckoning.
Adidas buys Runtastic to boost its fitness tech
Adidas is no stranger to technology by any means, but it clearly feels that it needs a leg up -- the fitness equipment maker has bought fitness tech firm Runtastic for just shy of $240 million. Both companies are wonderfully vague about what the deal entails, beyond extolling the virtues of a "perfect match" and helping Adidas "unleash its knowledge of sport." However, you'll be glad to hear that this isn't likely to deprive you of those all-important apps or wearables. Runtastic will live as a separate entity within Adidas, and it doesn't expect much to change on a day-to-day basis. For the most part, this means more cash and technical possibilities.
Adidas' RBZ baseball bat can boost your swing speed and power
There are plenty of gadgets out there to help you improve your baseball skills, including motion-sensing connected sensors. But Adidas wants to take that to a whole different level, for recreational players and college-level athletes alike. Meet the EQT X3 RBZ, a bat designed to increase the speed and power behind a player's swing. To make that possible, the sporting goods company is relying on materials like carbon composite and precise weight distribution throughout the bat, while a new EQT grip tape control aims to provide a tighter fit in players' hands. For being a baseball bat, the EQT X3 is as sleek as it gets -- and it would probably look great next to your Nike Vapor 360 glove. Adidas is launching the RocketBallz bat tomorrow for $400, in celebration of this year's College World Series.
Adidas and Spotify offer another way to soundtrack your run
Adidas and Spotify are already quite friendly, especially when it comes to supplying workouts with the proper tunes. The duo teamed up for offline playback on the Adidas SmartRun watch and soundtracking a jog with the help of RunKeeper. Now, there's an Adidas Go app that varies music based on movement tracked by your iPhone's accelerometer. Using that piece of smartphone tech, the app measures stride rate and matches songs from Spotify's library -- based on your listening habits -- to help you keep pace. When the run is over, stats like time, distance and pace can all be reviewed, saved and used to calculate your Adidas MiCoach RunScore. And if you'd like, you can save the collection of tracks the music service piped in along the way, too. Ready to lace up those sneakers? Well, you'll need an iPhone 4S or later to take advantage of the free app that's available at iTunes now.
Adidas outs sneaker reservation app as Yeezy season approaches
If you're into collecting limited-edition sneakers, Adidas has a new app that'll employ your phone to help nab new shoes. The Adidas Confirmed allows you to reserve new designs as they become available -- but It only works in New York City, for now. Push notifications will alert you when the reservation window is open, so you can nail down sizing and the pickup details. This only secures a pair of the rare kicks, and the actual exchange of funds takes place at the pre-determined retail location. The app's arrival comes before the highly-anticipated release of the next Yeezy shoe designed by Kanye West. Those familiar with the sneaker buzz know Nike's first two installments were snatched up in seconds, so best of luck grabbing some when the new version is finally revealed.
Adidas' next move is to keep young students fit and healthy
In the US, child obesity is an ever-growing concern that's desperately in need of a remedy. Knowing this, Adidas is now looking to help the cause and, in the process, make it fun for young people to get fit. The sporting gear company has teamed up with Interactive Health Technologies (whose mission is "empowering individuals to self-manage their health") to bring its miCoach technology to schools Stateside. A few years ago, IHT began implementing a heart rate monitoring system for gym classes in the US, and now Adidas wants to take that initiative one step further. By combining miCoach's activity tracking with IHT's heart rate system, Adidas believes it can get students to motivate themselves.
Adidas adds Microsoft's MixRadio to its miCoach Smart Run watch
It was supposed to be Spotify. Instead, it looks like Adidas will rely elsewhere to get more music for miCoach Smart Run users to listen to during workout sessions. Thanks to a new partnership with MixRadio, Adidas is bringing Nokia's Microsoft's music-streaming service to its Android-powered watch, giving runners access to more than 34 million songs right from their wrist -- and yes, they work offline. Naturally, miCoach Smart Run owners need a subscription to MixRadio in order to access the hefty catalogue, but Adidas does have a limited time promotion that offers six months of free access when signing up. Before you can do any of that, however, you'll have to download an over-the-air update for the Smart Run, which is available now via the settings menu.
