Second innings: Can the Reebok co-founder help build Syntilay into an AI footwear giant?

Because of the technologies we use, it will take us three months instead of 18 to manufacture something, and we can 3D-print it with no moulds instead of spending thousands of dollars on moulds. There is no minimum inventory requirement, we’ll print on demand and 70 percent of our design is automated. 

Q. What investments did you need to start this up?

BW: We are bootstrapped, and have invested just a bit over six figures to date. The fact that we are bootstrapped is testament to how good the technology is. Typically, you would need venture capital funds to get your new brand going. But the innovation of technology and automation of design give us a much better cost structure and timeframe. We can iterate faster and move at startup speed. There's a lot more we can do being bootstrapped while having a lot more control that we like to. 

Q. Joe, at 90, what made you take the plunge again with a startup? 

Joe Foster: When the company gets as big as Reebok, there's no adventure anymore. Everything is treated as a business, it's a big machine, and there's no identification. When I started Reebok with my brother in 1958, we had the excitement of dealing with problems and failures and successes that went into building the company. Teaming up with Ben is like stepping back 70 years and starting again with excitement. But on a different level—now we have social media and all these technologies that are difficult for me to understand. But I can understand the excitement and the thrill of a challenge. 

With Reebok, when we left the parent company, we didn't have any money. We're in the same situation here. When you have to bootstrap, you learn very quickly because you can’t sustain a position where nothing’s happening. And that’s where the excitement lies.  

Q. Can you take us through how the Xplorer is made?

BW: Typically, when you design a new shoe, you get in the room with your designer, share your ideas, show some examples and then you get the first sketch. If you like it, that’s great; if you don’t, it goes through revisions. We said why not streamline the process with AI—we’d be really precise with the AI image generation, iterate faster, and create a sketch based on this image. Then, with the software Vizcom, we can generate a 3D model, use generative AI to create patterns and textures around the shoe, and ChatGPT for shading. Our partner Zellerfeld, in Berlin, Germany—which recently collaborated with Nike for the Airmax 1000, its first 3D-printed shoes—will print out those pairs for you. All a customer has to do post-purchase is take a photo of each foot next to an 8x11 piece of paper, and upload it on the app—we will extract 12 data points of each feet and print the customised pair.  

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Q. With such levels of customisation, what sort of prices and volumes are you looking at? What are your plans to bring scale? 

BW: When we released Xplorer, I think it was the world’s most affordable 3D-printed shoe. Now that’s changed a bit [the Adidas Climacool 3D-printed slip-on launched on May 2 comes for $140]. But it was super important for us to make this as accessible as possible. That means our margin wasn't as big necessarily, but we got this in the hands of people who have never tried  3D-printed shoes. 

Our plan now is to go to retail and scale beyond with traditionally produced products that are designed by AI, while also continuing to do 3D printing. There's only so much scale we can achieve with 3D printing—we are planning to make a couple of thousand pairs of Xplorers—but it's an amazing way to test ideas and bring them to consumers. 

JF: What I can agree with Ben is that 3D printing is slow and the volumes are not there. But this is an opportunity for technology to move forward. I would have never thought that Crocs, which are basically clogs, would become so popular. It's just a moulded product and not traditionally-made. These are the technologies which are coming in, and everything is going to change. What Ben is able to do is move quickly with AI, 3D printing. Whereas the big companies—the likes of Nike, Adidas, Reebok—need to plan everything 18 months in advance because they need volumes. We are breaking ground, breaking new ideas and Ben is chasing down the technology every day to find out if we can move something forward. 

Q. Will AI in shoemaking eliminate the human touch?

JF: There are two aspects to this: One, will the technology manage to produce footwear which is acceptable without the human touch? I think they're a long way from that. In the design and development area, the human touch has got to be there. But what can happen is that design processes and certain materials will become more available as technology moves forward. So, there is a combination—AI will not replace designers. What AI does is help the designer reduce the time and move very quickly. And then you can develop that design with 3D-printing. You’ll probably have to take it traditional when you have to make it in different materials, but AI is definitely going to make a difference to whoever makes shoes. 

The Xplorer, which is AI-designed by Syntilay and 3D-printed by their partner Zellerfeld

Q. Companies like Nike and Adidas have created AI-generated shoes, albeit for athletes and not for commercial release. If they do come to retail in future, what's your plan to take on the behemoths?

BW: Reebok has generated images with AI, but they didn't produce a physical shoe. Nike produced a bunch of physical shoes. But they were one-offs and you couldn't really wear them. I think everyone's probably going to go down the route of designing stuff with AI, since it’s cost-effective and fastest. But because we've experimented so much already with AI, we’re going to be in a great position going forward. We have the best understanding of anybody in this category so far because we've actually gone out to consumers. 

Q. How will AI impact the sports industry? Will we, for example, see world records broken in athletics with shoes optimised for performance?

BW: AI is going to really define this category. You look at a recent running shoe that came out—it was super light and as optimised as possible. Humans can optimise stuff as much as they want but AI can understand things that humans can't. AI can be trained on so much data that can take a human a lifetime to go through. So, it makes sense to apply this in a field like athletics. 

Q. Joe, you started making shoes in 1958, and you are still doing it in 2025. How have you seen the footwear industry change? 

JF: One of the biggest changes has been retail. Now we have a few retailers, but they're big. Years ago, in my early days, I used to travel to America to the NSGA (National Sporting Goods Association) show, where hundreds of small retailers would visit. Those shows don’t exist anymore because there are only a handful of retailers—maybe 10 or 20 big ones globally. 

Earlier, the brands used to manufacture, stock and sell, now everything is sold in advance. So, 12 months in advance, you will go to a JD Sports or a Foot Locker and they will buy 10 or 20 million pairs of shoes. Nike or Adidas or Reebok will not even see those shoes; they will be shipped directly to large retailers. These retailers have much more influence now on what the product will look like, how much it will cost etc.

But, on the other hand, as Ben was saying, the influence still comes from sport. The brands stay in power by influencers—basketball is a big one for Reebok, athletics for Adidas and for Nike it’s soccer. Where Ben is going, we’re stepping to one side of this. We're looking for a different way of influencing—not the absolute millions of products, we'd like to do a few 100,000 and make a nice business. This is the most exciting thing about Syntilay—looking for something different. Ben had the Nasdaq board in Times Square for 10 minutes to show the shoe, and he didn’t have to pay for that. What paid for the visibility was that it was different. 

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Q. How different is starting up in 2025 to starting up in 1958?

JF: The thing about starting a company now is you start with the media. The product is simple, although different. You’ve got to get to the people and catch their imagination. When we were starting, we would go to our consumers by going to sports events to meet people directly. Now, everything is on social media. Technology and social media are the two things that you’ve got to be willing to play with. 

Q. How will the US’s new tariffs with some Asian countries affect the footwear business?  

JF: Right now, traditional shoemaking is facing a tariff war and we don’t know what’s going to come out of it. It has to turn around because it isn’t going to move into America. For traditional shoemaking, the demand has always been for a better price. In 1970, a big group of Americans asked us to make 20,000 pairs at a better price. We only had a small factory in the UK, that meant we had to go to Asia. And it’s been driven that way since. Now to turn that around and manufacture in America would be impossible. It would take years, and that's if they can find the people. So, the volumes will always stay in Asia.