/ / Lab 04, Rotterdam
The lab
Publishing the numbers is the whole strategy.
Every performance claim in footwear is technically true and practically meaningless, because the test conditions are never published. We decided to publish ours, which turned out to be a marketing decision as much as an engineering one.
It has consequences. The Blackout outsole is unpigmented, which costs about 8% abrasion resistance, and we print that on the product page. Thinair lasts roughly 250km and the box says so. Groundwire has no rock plate and will hurt for six weeks. None of that is in the interest of a conversion rate.
What it buys is that when we say the Nullform midsole returns 84% of input energy on a 1000-cycle rig, you can reasonably believe it — because we told you about the 250km shoe.
Drops are numbered and never restocked. Eleven people work in the unit. There is no marketing department, which is why the photography is made in an afternoon and the copy is written by whoever built the shoe.
- 11
- People in the lab
- 14
- Drops released
- 3
- Lasts in production
- 0
- Restocks, ever
/ / Timeline
2021
Lab 04 opens
Four people, one last, a rented pull-over machine in a Rotterdam industrial unit.
2022
Drop 001
180 pairs of a single trainer, sold in nine minutes to people who mostly knew us personally.
2023
First own last
We stop buying stock lasts. The women's last follows eight months later — not a scaled men's last.
2024
Outsole tooling
Our own tooling comes online. Drop 011 is the first shoe on it.
2026
Drop 014
Supercritical PEBA midsole, developed because we could not buy the compound we wanted.
Talk to the lab
Fit questions, wear-test data, or a spec we have not published yet.