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words, images & interview // Nick DePaula:
Ben Herath, adidas Running’s VP of Design, has a recent run of footwear designs that can go toe-to-toe with anyone in the industry.
Whether it’s on true performance merit, beloved adoption into the lifestyle space or just pure appreciation as a modern product creation, it was his UltraBoost design of almost two years ago that has helped to reset the adidas Running category and shift the consumer expectation for the brand. That first design, simply rooted in the approach to create the “ultra expression” of both Boost and Primeknit technologies, instantly became a classic of today and a timeless staple of tomorrow. The brand’s third iteration of the original silhouette is dropping yet today — in 11 colorways.
“Five or six years ago, I started working on the first Energy Boost, and I’ve been working on Boost ever since then,” he smiles. “The Ultra Boost is the pinnacle of shoes that I’ve worked on. I love sneakers, love sport and love creativity, so I’m kind of doing my dream job right now.”
As the shoe grew and grew in popularity, Herath and his co-workers in Germany began to notice a trend across social media. Myself and a few other perhaps-bored-but-curious collectors were simply cutting the shoe’s midfoot cage right off the upper. I just thought it could look sweet, so I grabbed some tweezers and mini-scissors on a random weekend. It was a process that took about 90 seconds per pair, with most of the labor coming from figuring out how to lace the shoe from there.
Over the past couple of years, adidas has touted two consistent concepts and ethos in all interviews, press releases and media — an Open Source approach to building product and being the brand for Creators. As Herath details below in this in-depth interview from the adidas global headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, pulling inspiration from the public became a key insight to creating Uncaged. The process from there, as you can expect, took a little longer than the 90 seconds per pair that I spent to completely gut the shoe of its actual upper performance.
When the shoe officially launched earlier this summer, fans of the model seemed to appreciate the update. It was the fastest selling adidas shoe ever in America — 11,000 pairs were sold in the first hour alone. Read ahead for countless details into the design of the UltraBoost Uncaged, straight from designer Ben Herath, and stay tuned all week for even more #BoostWeek features.
CREATING UNCAGED ///
Nick DePaula: Can you walk me through the timeline of when the team first set out to update the original UltraBoost with the Uncaged execution?
Ben Herath: When we found Boost, we changed how we designed shoes. It started to be about, ‘How does it feel?’ We did little things on that first shoe, like cutting open the stroble board, and that just let you feel more of the Boost. It was a real turning moment for us. If you’ve tried Boost on and can feel how bouncy it is, it feels alive somehow. It’s incredible.
We’ve been so excited by the positive reaction from everyone around the Ultra Boost. I don’t think we anticipated that level of excitement that a shoe like that would somehow go beyond running and transcend out into culture. We always hope for something like that, that we create a shoe that people are really going to gravitate to.
As we started to grow, we started to bring people out there into our creation process. A big shift for the last couple of years is us opening up our doors. We don’t want to create things in isolation, and we always want to share what it is that we’re doing.
We want to shape the future of what we’re doing with people out there, wherever that comes from. The first step we took on that was the PureBoost X. We worked with female runners from all over the world, and brought their insights in at every step of the creation process. We asked for their help on the design, the materials and the look and feel of it. The whole way along, we were working together with them. For us, that was something new, and it also got us excited because we were able to get so much feedback throughout the creation process.
Uncaged has been such an exciting project, but it was also so inspired by people out there. Nick, you were one of the first. [laughs] You were cutting the cage off, and it was hugely inspirational to see that level of creativity that was going on out there and people customizing their own thing. The initial reaction for me was a little bit of a surprise. I didn’t think people would spend $180 and then cut into it. [laughs] When we started seeing all of the images popping up all over the place, and the tutorials on YouTube, that helped energize us and helped accelerate our process.
If you go back two years ago, when we first go back to the original samples of the Ultra Boost, for us it was always about drilling the design down to the absolute ingredients that you need, and challenging every ingredient on the shoe. Do we need it, or don’t we need it? We were working on Uncaged and went back to those Ultra Boost samples. On the medial side, we were looking at how much support, and we were really hacking into our samples. We’d trim down the heel counter and hacking the shoe ourselves to remove the pieces we didn’t need.
We wanted to create a perfect sock for your feet. When we stripped the shoe down, we felt a collective excitement, because there was something cool about the stance and the curves – it really resonated with us. Our developer mocked up three different pairs of it and sent out the request.
“The act of deconstruction was also an act of creation.”
The act of deconstruction was also an act of creation. By deconstructing the shoe, a new shoe kind of appeared. When you start to look at all of the parts and pieces of the Ultra, we were planning and thinking about, “What’s next?” But we didn’t know how successful the shoe was going to be. [laughs]
The UltraBoost kind of almost immediately became the benchmark for Primeknit and Boost for all of our categories. It was the pioneer shoe that we all began to reference. I was getting emails from all kinds of designers in other categories that had done their own spin on the UltraBoost, and it was quite cool to have all of these ideas fueling us.
We had a collective instinct that there was something here, and when the shoe launched, your Uncaged pair and then other ones from leading trendsetters cutting the shoe and hacking it really proved to us that was the right direction, and that we wanted to release something soon. [laughs] We wanted to make it a reality as quickly as we could. It was hugely motivating and energizing. So, thank you to the people that did that. [laughs]
BRANDING SHIFT ///
Nick DePaula: The first UltraBoost had your classic midfoot Three Stripes, but when people cut the cage off that of course stripped away the logo. How did you guys look at where you’d place the Stripes for the Uncaged, and how’d you ultimately land on the toe placement?
Ben Herath: Personality played a big part of it, and we wanted to do something disruptive. When we saw people cutting the cage, it was hacking and repurposing it, but also removing the branding. [laughs] So we didn’t want to do the expected and put Three Stripes on the side for the Uncaged. We had an early sample like that, but we wanted to look at branding in a different way, that stayed with the personality of the shoe.
We love the Three Stripes in the proudest spot on the midfoot, but we wanted this shoe in a way to reflect the attitude of the streets of New York. You’re running through New York, and you’re smelling everything and feeling everything, and it’s just an experience. It’s not perfect, and we tried to reflect that in the design. There’s an imperfect graphic to the upper, and then we put the Three Stripes where you normally don’t see them. It’s an area that you see when you look down instead.
NDP: How’s the Primeknit construction different here?
BH: For the Primeknit, we have three different yarns together. Then, each of those yarns can be divied up into three yarns as well, so that gives us a total of nine yarns to tune. We can tune the function and the visual. That’s both exciting and extremely tough. If you change one little thread, a red shoe goes black. [laughs]
One of the inspirations was that the Primeknit is only going to look better with age. You can wear them, and just like your favorite pair of jeans, they have some texture and will age great. We also know that it’s a shoe that will be worn beyond the run.
We wanted to design it for people to run in, but you can also appreciate the style of it with a variety of outfits and looks. Having a shoe that almost seamlessly blends into your outfit was something that we were striving for as well. When we think about the future, and creating products for the future, we also think we have to have something with charm that you can still relate to.
DIALING THE PERFORMANCE ///
Nick DePaula: As much as I love just kicking the shoe around casually, real runners love the first one to actually run in, so you had a high bar to live up to here. How’d the process of keeping that same performance of the original go? I assume that expectation from consumers was always there.
When you remove the cage, you reduce all the structure and support of the shoe, and weaken the performance of it as a running shoe. We want people to still be able to run a marathon in it, or any distance, and it’s going to give you the same experience. That wasn’t so easy. [laughs]
We looked at re-engineering the Primekint pattern, and looked at the different support zones to strengthen the knit where it should be. We had to re-engineer the whole pattern, and it still wasn’t enough to really provide the support that you need. If we were going to guarantee it for all runners out there, we still needed to look at something that would reinforce the knit as well.
For inspiration, we looked at some of the Olympic track spikes from the London Olympics in 2012. There were some new constructions, and they’re our lightest and fastest shoes that we make for track and field athletes.
“’How do we uncage the UltraBoost, but keep the great performance of the original shoe?’ That was the singular goal.”
They went through almost four years of testing to be ready for the Olympics, and they’re our race cars. They’re absolutely the bare minimum of what we can create to make the athlete perform faster. It’s one surface, one material, with a reinforced layer that has a high strength-to-weight ratio.
We used that on the backside of the upper, and there’s a soft, seamless suede that’s bonded to the knit. It’s strong, it’s lightweight, and it feels great against your foot as well. It’s something that we knew had been validated by so many athletes out there.
For us, that was a huge step forward, because we could embed the support we needed, without disrupting the visual. The design is able to work with the foot, just like the original UltraBoost. Once we had that down, we had two key areas we wanted to look at. The first was the collar shape, because this shoe is all about the silhouette, and then letting the uncaged Primeknit breathe. We wanted to create a collar that extends the silhouette. We tried to so many options, and then landed on the simplest one that works.
You can re-orient the lacing or you can create your own type of thing. That’s something I’m always excited to see.
We saw the trend of rope laces, and how people are loving those, but what we found in testing was that the flat laces didn’t have the bulk through the knit and it removes all of the irritation that might form once you start clocking past 5K or 10K. The flat laces ended up keeping the silhouette sleek as well, and that was something that all came back to performance.
“The UltraBoost kind of almost immediately became the benchmark for Primeknit and Boost for all of our categories.”
We ended up with a shoe that’s engineered to run, has 360 degree Primeknit around and all the function is embedded inside the shoe. What we also wanted to do was keep all of the key ingredients that worked, like the tooling, the Boost midsole and the heel counter.
That’s all the engine. From all the testing and feedback, we’ve heard how great the performance and the ride is, and it was always important to keep all of that, to stay true to the key ingredients of what Ultra Boost is.
