With recent exciting advancements in AI for consumers in software from OpenAI with ChatGPT, xAI with Grok, Perplexity, and others we find the world of physical consumer oriented products available today being disrupted in aesthetic and function from AI to be nearly non existent.

AI Making Physical Products Is A Whitespace
With this gap in the market and a curiosity in pushing the boundaries of design, we set out to develop the world's first AI made commercially available shoe. Not merely a concept shoe that demonstrated the idea was possible, but a product that you as a consumer can actually own and use!
To take a step back, Syntilay, the brand behind the creation, was founded by Ben Weiss to give new age talent and brands an ability to make high quality "athlete level" footwear. The premise was, influencers that are selling hats, shirts, and other merch should be able to sell shoes as well with the right lifestyle appeal. The brand is based off the word scintillate, because the goal is to enable anyone to feel they can truly shine bright and sparkle in the direction in life they want to go after.
It Took Time Assembling The Team
Spending about 2 years putting all the production and distribution together, Syntilay equally was focused on assembling an incredibly talented team of people to help succeed. The vision was explained to Joe Foster, the legendary founder of sneaker brand Reebok, who with his wife Julie, made the decision to advise. Joe founded Reebok with his brother and helped lead the brand to become the best selling footwear company in the world. He wrote about this in the book, Shoe Maker, which he has spoken about throughout the globe. He and Julie recognized the potential of this new market, having seen the success of influential people like Jane Fonda on the Reebok brand.

Additionally, Shark Tank's original Shark, Kevin Harrington joined with his advisory team of Brandon, Brian, and Chris. Kevin's expertise behind shaping the Celsius drink's influencer marketing strategy, greatly helping the brand succeed and fathering the modern infomercial have key overlap with our business. David Meltzer, who is a friend of both teams, also joined with his vast network of influencers having previously lead an elite sports agency.
Determining Our Partners To Manufacturer And Design
When embarking on this mission of making the world's first AI designed commercial shoe, we choose to work with Zellerfeld, a 3D printing shoe factory based in Germany. The company is lead by Cornelius Schmitt. TIME called their process of making shoes one of its best inventions of 2023 and they have recently collaborated with Nike on the Air Max 1000. We also enlisted the services of Kedar Benjamin, an experienced shoe designer based in India that excels at utilizing AI in the footwear development process.

The traditional footwear design process begins with determining the right sources of inspiration and then proceeds into making a sketch. The sketches are refined as the client reviews and they are then to be made into a workable model. This process can take time.
Our process here to create AI made shoes started very differently. We first generated concept images via AI software MidJourney to get the initial direction. Then we refined these concepts based on what we liked and generated more specific images. Once arriving at the preferred direction, our designer Kedar, made a sketch from the concept images.

Making AI Made Shoes Nearly A Reality
After we had the sketch, we used Vizcom to generate a 3D model that can be workable to shape into what would become the final product. It generated a model without textures, patterns, and consisted of mostly an outline shape. This was an important step and could have taken weeks if not longer without AI generating it. We then needed to give the design life and a distinct personality to make our AI made shoes a reality.

AI Was Embedded Throughout Multiple Stages
That is where the AI pattern and texture generation was done, testing countless patterns and designs until achieving a look and feel that was distinct and futuristic. Doing these without AI, considering the patterns are not just in certain places, but all around the visible body on the top and on the bottom, would have taken much time. Our designer Kedar, refined the design to ensure all was done smooth and ready for printing with Zellerfeld.
When Zellerfeld first printed our shoes and sent them over, the Syntilay team tried them on and it was quite an amazing experience. We were wearing the first commercial AI made shoe. Shoes that were majority made by AI, yet available to the public. Not just a concept, the real deal.

Smart Design Externally And Internally
A main reason we were happy to work with Zellerfeld is because of their smart internal structuring of the 3D printed material. 3D printing traditionally has a layer by layer approach done, but internally those layers are just material. Zellerfeld has made those layers smartly structured to be durable.

The feel of the shoes is excellent and they are scanned to fit you via your phone camera. So the goal is to provide you the best possible fit out!
Our Core Philosophy
Syntilay's DNA is rooted in bringing incredible innovation to the general public, taking concepts into reality, and Sci-Fi to the present. Our first shoe, the xplorer, is a slide designed to be worn as a lifestyle shoe in a casual manner. The slide has become more worn than what it was designed for. Syntilay's slide has more material, durability, and give to enable you to wear your slides out and about casually and comfortably.

Join the revolution today!
This blog was done in collaboration with Ripple Media, an SEO and Digital Marketing Firm, also the makers of the lollol AI chat bot.
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