Crowdsourcing + RYZ = Great Sneakers

Crowdsourcing has been on my mind a lot lately so when Rob Langstaff of RYZwear.com mentioned he was going to be in Boston this week, I was excited to meet up with him for a drink at the Onyx in Boston’s North End. Rob, the former president of Adidas America and Adidas Japan, recently took the plunge to found RYZ, a Portland based start-up that produces community-designed shoes. For those familiar with Threadless, the “demi-gods” of t-shirt crowdsourcing, RYZ is the “Threadless” of sneakers. RYZ runs regular contests where they invite their online community to contribute designs. Aspiring designers download a template, add their designs and upload them to the site where RYZ then turns them into 3D models. People vote on their favorites and the winning design gets produced and sold.

Rob is a very affable guy and is clearly passionate about what he does - we had A LOT to talk about. We immediately jumped right into a conversation and it was a while before we realized that we hadn’t formally introduced ourselves. First thing we had to set straight was that Eric WASN’T the guy in my “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout shoes” t-shirt (although I think he quickly figured that out when he saw Eric)!  Rob gave us an update on his progress and it was really good to see RYZ, an early stage company that is just a few months ahead of us, already having success in this space. While our business models and markets are a little different we’re both web 2.0 footwear companies centered around self-expression and user-centered innovation. The footwear is really just our medium for enabling users to express themselves. Being what would be considered nontraditional companies in the industry, we share a lot of the same strategies and manufacturing challenges. Having already launched, Rob was able to validate a few of our forecasting assumptions and give us some good advice.

Rob had a duffel bag full of sneakers and we got to see some of them up close. Looking at the shoes, it’s clear that they’ve put a lot of time and thought into the design at RYZ. The silhouettes are your classic canvas high-tops but they have some really nice elements that set them apart. Some distinguishing features are the crystal outsoles that allow for printing a graphic on the bottom of the shoe (a really cool detail), the clear plastic guards on the toes that protect the designs from rubbing off, the comfortable pigskin and antimicrobial linings and the elastic connector between the tongue and the body that allows for a nice fit. But of course this thoughtfully designed white high-top is just the stage for the main feature - the art.

Since launching in June, RYZ has had 7 contests and produced 9 winnings designs, attracting artists and participants from all over the world (half of Ryz’s orders come from overseas) and all walks of life. The artwork is just as diverse too. Rob showed us some of the winners. One of my favorites was designed by prolific graffiti artist Jason Ehlers who goes by the name Caveman. I loved hearing the story about how Caveman created his winning design “The Creep” while serving time in prison after being busted for graffiti charges. ”The Creep” is an incredibly detailed design described as a “metaphorical illustration of the existence of a greater all-seeing eye. ”

Rob talked excitedly about how Caveman was able to redirect his passion for graffiti towards shoes (instead of buildings and bridges) and how RYZ has been able to be a part of that. Warhawk, another favorite, was inspired by pinup girls and war planes from the 1940s (Eric thought the bomb on the sole was cool). The designer, Leon Ryan is a self described “aficionado, jet pilot, illustrator, designer, firefighter and toreador” graphic artist from Australia. “Cables” designed by fashion designer, Peter Van Dam, is a more subdued but still excellent design that features telephone power lines against a white background. The black and white palette makes the shoe very versatile and wearable and the birds on the sole are a nice accent.

To me these shoes are works of art - so nice that I’d be afraid to wear them in fear of making them dirty. It’s almost like they belong on a mantelpiece. At $99 though, you’re truly getting a bargain on wearable art and I’d be tempted to buy 2 pairs - one for wearing and one for displaying!

While the RYZ design contests are open to anyone, the bar to entry is high from the standpoint that designs must be submitted using Illustrator or Photoshop. Typically if you’re proficient with these tools you’ve got some artistic talent. This inadvertently serves as a filter to keep the quality of artwork high. With crowdsourcing you always run the risk that noone is going to submit anything good so by raising the bar to entry you’re increasing the odds that you’re going to get a lot of high quality designs. And the shoes we saw reflected that.

Rob talked about how he wants to de-emphasize RYZ as a label and showcase the contributing designers instead (which is how Sole Envie is positioning itself as well). I really like what he wrote on his Welcome to RYZ company blog post. “At RYZ we’ve set out to create a “people’s brand - a community of designers, sneakerheads and anyone that cares enough about art, fashion or sneakers to speak up. Together we’ll create sneakers that are designed and chosen, not by some big, faceless corporation, but by you. Think of RYZ as a stage for designers to showcase their creativity and a forum for people to define what great sneaker design means. In other words, we just make comfortable sneakers – the rest is up to you.” I think RYZ does a great job of living up to this. The winning designers not only receive $1000 in cash but they also share the revenue by receiving $1 in royalty for every pair that gets sold. Perhaps even more rewarding than the cash is the recognition and exposure they receive for their work. Besides being featured on the RYZ site, their story also get showcased on the hang tags accompanying the sneakers which are a great touch.

This kind of web enabled collaboration is still a new phenomenon and companies have been using it in different ways. Startups such as RYZ have based their entire business models around harnessing the crowd to design and drive what gets produced whereas other companies look at crowdsourcing as just another way to harvest new ideas or innovations, hear customer feedback, or build brand loyalty and identification through contests and promotions. The Netflix Prize contest that will award 1 million dollars to anyone who can come up with a way to improve the accuracy of their movie recommendation engine, Cinematch, by 10% is a good example of the latter.

Crowdsourcing is still in the early adopter stage and it remains to be seen whether it can be a sustainable business model for products more complex than t-shirts. With Rob Langstaff at its helm, I think RYZ has a good shot of capturing the market and I think we’ll be hearing a lot more about them in the future.

Posted by Monika on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | Entrepreneur, Mass Customization, crowdsourcing | 1 Comment

Tags: Cables, Caveman, crowdsource, crowdsourcing, Flew the Coop, Jason Ehlers, Leon Ryan, Peter Van Dam, Rob Langstaff, RYZ, ryzwear, ryzwear.com, shoes, sneakers, The Creep, warhawk