Adidas Glitch - Designer Interview

Just a few days ago Adidas launched the 'Glitch', a completely new customizable football boot. And it didn't do it in the usual way, instead tasking young footballers from London with promoting the new product.

In addition, concrete info from Adidas on how to get the boots themselves has been quite scarce - even more reason to listen to what Sam Handy, Adidas Football Vice President of Design, had to say on the Glitch, talking to Soccerbible.

This is another big moment in what's been a huge year for the brand. Can you introduce Glitch and explain the thinking behind it?

Glitch is a groundbreaking boot for us in the way we’ve brought together the best of our functional innovation and our creative execution. Six months ago we brought the first functional laceless football boot to the market and now we’ve taken that technical learning and mixed it with the world of creativity and new ways that people want to express themselves and be creative in sport.

What makes Glitch so unique in the way adidas have developed the boot?

It’s all a work in progress right now; we’re going to work with a small group of kids in London who have been testing the boot and we’re going to create the next iterations with them based on live input.

We will be developing it with live feedback and that’s something that’s very different to ACE and X where everything is very planned: we build and amazing product, know how we’re going to bring it to market and build a range around it. But as we move forward, what we learn from Glitch we will also apply to our regular franchises, so ACE and X will be affected from the work we do with the Glitch community.

The way you’re bringing Glitch to market is something that's completely new for adidas Football as well.

Yes, we’re bringing Glitch to market in a very different way. The first roll-out will be in London within small communities, but we’ll be bringing it to more cities around the world. It’s invite only and you’ll only be able to order it through the Glitch app. So you have to know someone who knows someone, and then you can get it! That’s revolutionary in how a football boot is brought to market.

There must have been a few working titles, but why did you settle on the name ‘Glitch’?

I think that’s what it is, right? It’s a disruptor in our way of doing things. The point is that it’s creativity, it’s disruption, it’s different. It’s unpredictable and I think that’s what ‘Glitch’ means. You’ll notice it in the way people talk about it. ‘Is it a shoe?’ Is it a way of going to market? Is it an app? Is it a community?’ Its all of those things brought together and it’s really different to everything we usually do.

Can you give us an overview of the product itself and what consumers can expect?

Glitch comes with what we’re calling a ‘Techfit Laceless Inner Shoe’ and interchangeable ‘External Skins’ - neither part works without the other, obviously. The studs on the inner shoe lock into the cleat and hold it together. It doesn’t move and plays like a true high performance adidas football boot. There are two collar heights: a high and low, and maybe more to come. In total there’s three ‘socks’ and four ‘skins’ at launch. You buy a starter pack and you get one inner shoe and two skins, and you can chose which skins you get.”

Get a closer look at the different outer skins and inner shoes available for the Adidas Glitch initially here, and learn more about the concept in general here.

Do you like the way Adidas launched the Glitch? Drop us a line below.