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created 11 months ago | Tagged: |
Sally
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We’ve been able to customize products for a while, from Levi’s that are perfectly sculpted to our posteriors to Timbuk2 bags in our own triad of colors, and the result is always "custom" but not always so unique. These end products are only as diverse as the choices that go into them--a lesson I learned years ago when my brand-new Timbuk2 matched a friend’s almost perfectly.
Rayfish Footwear is looking to offer consumer customization, not by dye or stitching, but at the genetic level. On their site, you can mix and match various patterns of stingrays, and Rayfish will combine their DNA to match the design of your choice, actually growing you a genetically manipulated pair of stingrays to harvest as the leather for your shoes. The colors are bold. The patterns are intricate. And every pair is inherently unique. “It would not be feasible for ordinary people to code their desired pattern in the DNA, so we made a design tool that allows them to create a pattern that we can actually grow on the stingrays,” says Dr. Raymond Ong, head of Rayfish Footwear. That tool eschews esoteric DNA snippets for a graphic-laden UI, allowing you to drag and drop up to nine patterns into your shoe, selected from a library of 29 styles of leather. With so many choices combining into such an array of designs, the possibilities seem endless, though obviously there are some natural limitations to just how specific users can be about a shoe that is ostensibly grown.
