Calzamedi will host next 28th and 29th  of April the final meeting of the European project Demo ShopInstant Shoe. The DemoShopInstantShoe project has received funding from the European Commission (FP7 research programs), it is a direct follow on from the very successful ShopInstantShoe project, which came to promising conclusions in February 2012.

The scope of the DemoShopInstantShoe project is to develop a high-end female footwear being novel, ergonomic and personalized at the clients’ morphometry in a few minutes, the operation being conducted easily by a shop assistant. This will need new footwear upper materials based on composites including a shape memory alloy, creating an innovative service of shoe personalization in-the retail shops.

The customization process needs only a few steps: the client first chooses a shoe model which she likes among the customizable collection in the shop. The measures of the client's feet are taken in the store using pictures taken and processed via a specific app. Then, by means of an automatic deformable last, the upper part of the selected shoes will be modified in order to adapt the footwear to the client's foot geometry. The upper part of the shoes includes a specific shape memory composite, which allows to keep the given shape: the client can verify the fitting and decide if she buys the footwear, or not. If the footwear is rejected, a treatment in the customization box helps the footwear to recover its initial shape: it is heated to a certain temperature. This whole shaping/recovery process can be performed several times on the same shoe.

The exact shape of the clients’feet: input for the shaping system The major innovation is that a client with light foot disease has a wide choice and can try the models in a shop, with possibility of buying the adapted shoes, or not: in this case the recover allows the shop assistant to reshape the model and keep it in stock. This is an advantage also for retail shops, where a new range of customizable shoes can be offered without incidence on the stocks level.

The new consortium is composed of four original partners from SIS project (Calzamedi, Texinov, Nimesis and IBV) and two retailing distributors (OrtoTwins and TechnoBoots). The outcomes produced will allow the consortium to execute suitable marketing actions, enhancing SMEs to commercially exploit and service the market after project ends.

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