You’ve probably noticed the quiet (and not so quiet) invasion of technology into the fashion industry. At Louis Vuitton’s latest resort collection in Hong Kong this past December, one product on the runway was a high-tech update to the house’s usual luxury savoir-faire.
The LV Cobra – futuristic slip-on clogs – weren’t stitched together in a Paris atelier. They were entirely 3D-printed from fused layers of thermoplastic polyurethane by Zellerfeld, a German startup conceived in 2016 by Cornelius Schmitt in his dorm room while studying industrial engineering at Clausthal University of Technology.
But Zellerfeld’s ambitions go beyond just selling shoes. Last February, he launched a beta platform that allows emerging designers to earn royalties from their designs. Designers upload their concepts to Zellerfeld’s Discord channel, and Zellerfeld lists them for sale on its website and prints orders on demand.
The hope is to capitalize on the growing creator economy, in which more and more individuals are building businesses by creating their own products or content.
The success isn’t just a win for Zellerfeld. It also illustrates how 3D printing has evolved from a simple rapid prototyping tool for industrial applications in the 1980s to a technology that is transforming how companies can produce consumer products today.
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