Los Angeles footwear and leather goods factory Lalaland is augmenting its capabilities to produce performance shoes through a new strategic partnership with 3D-printing innovator Elastium.
Based in the Downtown Fashion District, Lalaland is California’s largest shoe manufacturer, serving global fashion firms like LVMH and Gap Inc. According to CEO Alex Zar, the partners aim to bolster the growth of localized domestic footwear production using an advanced methodology that relies on a unique combination of 3D printing and traditional manufacturing processes.
Watch on FN
Lalaland has carved out a portion of its sprawling production space allowing Elastium to set up its own operations, which employ a proprietary lightweight TPU to create footwear foams and uppers. Those pieces, produced using the company’s automated 3D-printing technology, are then assembled using traditional construction methods.
Founded three years ago by engineer and designer Robert Karklinsh, Elastium aims to bring 3D-printing capabilities to the mass manufacturing space by solving for issues like high material costs and weight, long development times, limited labor availability and untenable minimum order quantities. According to Karklinsh, who recently moved to L.A. from the United Arab Emirates to grow the company, the firm has worked to develop a scalable process that will benefit American brands looking to onshore more of their production.
“My team have developed not only the material from scratch, but also the technology to print from this material,” he told Sourcing Journal. “This includes 3D printers equipped with proprietary and patent pending print heads, software, all kinds of different systems.”
While traditional footwear midsoles made for performance shoes are made through injection molding—done almost exclusively in Asia—Elastium’s 3D-printing technology can pump out both foams and lattice-like “knits” made for footwear uppers, all made from the same pelletized TPU.
Karklinsh said bringing these capabilities stateside was a strategic decision that he believes will attract athletic footwear firms looking to accelerate the research and development process and reduce costs related to sampling, tooling and building molds at overseas factories, as well as shipping shoes thousands of miles by air or ocean freight.
“By creating this synergy between traditional technology and advanced technology, we can really run better footwear businesses, which is not possible if we rely on offshoring,” he explained. “For example, instead of working in this six-to-nine-month cycles, now brands relying on onshore production can work in one-month cycles.”
While initial production capacity will be limited, having the ability to make finished goods in the U.S. will give brands the opportunity to test product in the market. And in the not-so-distant future, Zar and Karklinsh aim to expand Elastium’s footprint, making it possible to produce larger runs in L.A.
Perhaps most attractive of all, though, is the prospect of no minimum order quantities. Without the need to produce expensive molds, the technology can churn out a single pair of shoes with minimal investment.
“The common goal we share with Alex is to repatriate footwear production…by creating a better footwear business here, with better consumer focused products,” he said. “What we are planning right now is the production of products which will really push the state of footwear forward in both performance and innovation and, of course, in sustainability.”
Zar, who founded Lalaland in L.A. nearly two decades ago with those ideals in mind, said he has been drawn to the idea of 3D-printed footwear for some time. But until recently, “The price of the material used in printing for midsoles was so expensive that it wasn’t economical at all for production—only for prototyping and research.”
Seeing how Elastium had reimagined the process using lighter—and cheaper—materials, along with specialized hardware and software, convinced him that the group’s technology could lead to a viable, growth-oriented process for onshore footwear production. Notably, another capability that Lalaland plans to leverage is the technology’s ability to develop molds for the Desma direct-soling injection molding machines that Zar invested in during the pandemic.
“They realized that I invested a couple of million dollars in Desma, but I am still at the mercy of overseas [producers] for making the molds that this machine requires in order to inject the TPU,” he said. With the same machines Elastium uses to 3D print foam midsoles, it can also print molds for the Desma machines, giving the partners more ways to expand production within the same factory.
“So we shortened the time, we reduced the cost, and now we are able to do everything here, and we are not dependent on anybody outside of the country,” he added. Zar has now become a senior investor in the company, and helped plan its relocation to the U.S. in recent months.
Elastium and Lalaland announced the strategic partnership on Thursday with the public debut of their first co-designed shoe, the Orca. The style features 3D-printed uppers and foam midsole units, which are assembled on Lalaland’s standard assembly lines.
“This is the beauty of it—we don’t try to replace everything that works with something completely different; we just add new superpowers to what already exists,” Karklinsh said.
“We combine the new technology with the old technology,” Zar added. “This will allow us to be able to bring performance to the market, and also open up the options of the additional utilities of this technology.”
