ULT Gear is a retired project, 2023 to 2024. Nothing here is for sale. A TChristiaan project by Thomas Bouwman.
ULTGEAR

Packable Apparel

SwitchKicks

Design brief · first-round concepts

Modular travel shoes: one lightweight inner shoe, swappable outer shells.

A sandal-like base shoe that fits inside a thin minimalist shell, with outer shells you swap to change the shoe: sandal or beach, dress, house or lounger, athletic or runner. I hired a footwear designer on a phased ideation process, 14 hours for the base shoe and four uppers, then critique rounds, and got a 25-page travel-footwear brief plus three first-round concepts with lace and laceless inner shoes, mesh, canvas and suede outers, and one-piece EVA soles. A single shoe mold costs about $10k and a usable prototype would have been $20k minimum. That is where it stopped.

On file

  • Travel Footwear design brief, 25 pages, May 2023
  • SwitchKicks first-round concept designs, 3 concepts
  • Phased design invoice: ideation, critique, ideation
SwitchKicks