Swiss sportswear brand On is the latest company to embrace advanced "spray-on" materials with a "revolutionary" robot-made sneaker it believes can improve performance in any athletic events.
The Cloudboom Strike LS is lace-free and weighs less than the latest iPhone. Designed to be more adaptable, dynamic and supportive than your average running sneakers, the US$ 330 shoes already have a convincing track record: Kenyan runner Hellen Obiri, an Olympic silver medalist and the only woman to have won indoor, outdoor and cross-country world titles, triumphed at this year’s Boston Marathon wearing a pair. She wore them again during the Paris 2024 Games a few months ago.
Zurich-based On credits its shoes’ success to a combination of biomechanics, physiology and extreme lightness. (A men’s US size 8.5 weighs just 170g per shoe, over 100g lighter than several popular running shoes of the same size.) "More than anything, we want (the athletes) to win," said senior director of innovation, Ilmarin Heitz, in a promotional video published recently. "That is our gauge of success."
With no heel-cap, laces or tongue, the translucent, sock-like sneaker looks like a running shoe that has shed its skin. Its inventor, Johannes Voelchert, came up with the idea as a student after seeing a Halloween-themed hot glue gun that shot decorative spider webs.
"I saw that there was a quick way of creating a textile onto a complex shape," Voelchert, now On’s senior lead of innovation concept design, said in the brand’s video. "A shoe seemed to be the right object."
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