Adidas Golf Senior Footwear Designer Val Kriegel joins Bob Weeks to discuss the new Adidas Tour 360 24 Golf Shoes and much more!
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20 years of the two or 360 when you consider what your role was in this shoe did you think of it as a an honor or a challenge to redesign such an iconic shoe I mean definitely both definitely an honor and also definitely a challenge because it is such a personal franchise personal shoe to so many people um but I I do feel very lucky that I was able to work on this model the fit performance durability Trio there mhm how much give and take is there between each one of those as you try to come to a complete project you know with this one they kind of all worked a little bit hand inand you know um they were just sort of things that we wanted to focus on sort of every step of the way as we’re designing it as we’re solving problems with the shoe we just wanted to make sure that those were the the needs that we were answering kind of at all times so walk walk me through the process from when you start you first sit down you probably gather all sorts of information on from different sources and when you start to sketch it out what is it what what’s that process like to get to that point yeah so we do a lot of consumer insights you know I’m gathering inspiration trying to get out and and see things like art fashion see what’s going on in the world experience some golf see what the golfers are wearing um and just kind of get your mind reset um combined with like seasonal Direction and things like that um and then start putting pen to paper and and going to a deep exploration you know and and throwing all the ideas out um Talk meeting as a team collaborating you know so it takes quite a bit before we get to that final sketch that we all we all feel good about how how much change would you say there is from the first sketch you did to the final one you hand in oh my gosh um there’s a lot you know and then there’s even more change after we have that final sketch right so we have to work out with the factories you know we sometimes we encounter issues of not being able to construct something or or things that we didn’t think about and and things that we have to kind of pivot and and adjust as we as we work through is it is it also um I don’t know maybe amazing that you’ve had this shoe for 20 years now and you’re still bringing in Innovation and change and things that just never seems to stop that must be satisfying to try to keep going yeah and that’s why it’s so great working for a brand like Adidas that has so much performance and Innovation and we’re able to bring all of these new technologies and Infuse it into the tour 360 and just you know just trying to learn from the past and and keep keep improving every every time what about the actual fashion element of it where does that um sit in in how when you’re when you’re designing the shoe yeah so I you know we create like a a inspiration board where we really want to like Define that look um and what we’re kind of going for and and something like the tour 360 a lot of the performance does lead the design um but you know we knew with this one we wanted it to be pretty clean and premium um so we are infusing like those that fashion element into it you know but a lot of it is performance- driven um the boa look is something when you told us about that the other day how it would seemed like that would be such a simple thing or that we should have concept had a concept before to tie that into an actual design as opposed to just sort of slapping it on at the end of that how does that Innovation start yeah so that I mean I I like to design the boa models pretty much side by side um because they are so different you know and I want to make sure that the design does work for the boa model as well so so really we we start with the boa at the beginning um in that beginning sketching process um talking yesterday with with both Colin and Grace they both came and said that there were specific things that were really attractive to them uh gray said the heel um Colin said he loved that the spike at the toe yeah how important is that feedback to you compared to the wave I know it’s all probably equal but the wave of of consumers who were giving you feedback yeah I mean something like this we we definitely want to get in front of our tour athletes and make sure that it’s performing for them and what they need um you know our consumers are are important as well too so but something like this it’s you know our Pinnacle performance product so that athlete feedback is very important
