Shoe Design Services

From a single shoe sketch to an entire footwear range designed, specified and sourced, we offer our clients a design consultancy service, focused on their specific, unique needs.

Reports, Research and Trade Fairs

We're known for our thorough research, often we've heard a client say, 'how on earth did you find that?' We visit many of the major footwear and fashion trade shows - please see our shoe design blog and our shoedesigner Twitter feed for details - we can write reports for you on these shows and also provide market retail reports. We also assist our clients at shows by helping with buying selection, sample amendments and other resources advice. Click here to view portfolio examples of shoe design research.

Briefing

• We can work from your design brief, help you to write or even adapt your design brief following initial consultation and project evaluation.
• We can offer you help with your range build – designing and range building a footwear range from scratch.
• We can review your previous seasons’ range helping you to develop 'move-on's and suggest recolours or new materials for your best selling styles.
• We can also suggest solutions to other problems with your existing range, for instance, fitting or production issues and if we can’t help you, we probably know a footwear expert that can!

Shoe Design

What type of footwear do we design? The answer is most types! We have experience of designing most categories of footwear and we keep adding categories each year we're in business! Please click on a category below to see a portfolio example:

We're an 100% digital business, we do hand sketch, but on ipad, this means we can get the ideas to you and to the factory quickly! We can refresh your existing range with new colours or materials and work with your existing kits to design new uppers.

As well as providing full tech packs for our own shoe designs, we can also offer a spec writing service - just send us the footwear designs and an example of an existing spec if you have one. We can do the rest, even liasing with your factory if needs be!

Graphics

• We have extensive experience in developing licensed footwear, working with style guides and supplied graphics, where necessary developing or adapting apparel prints and logos on footwear as needed.

Lasts,outsoles and heels development

• We can develop any footwear construction, design outsoles, write specs for new lasts, heels and outsoles and work with the manufacturer to develop blueprints and prototypes.
• We have experience of working with TR/TPR/Rubber/ Compression Moulded and sheet EVA, Pebax and polycarbonate, wood, cork, jute, etc.
• We have contacts who can make your concepts in 3D cad and get prototypes quickly.

Sourcing and Troubleshooting

• We can work with your factory – either remotely by email and Skype or we can visit and work with the sample room in person.
• We can put you in touch with/advise you on footwear experts such as
  pattern cutters, footwear technologists and testing facilities.
• Can't find the right factory? We're happy to work with you to find the best place for your project.
• Shoe range delayed or not quite right? We can produce photo-realistic artwork to show to your sales force/buyers instead
• Did a product prototyping business, or a shoe factory make a mess of your samples?Don't know what to do? We can fix it for you!

New footwear concepts

• We have also developed footwear for new market sectors, if you want to develop a new type of footwear, please contact us for evaluation of your project. We have experience of working with academia as a consultant and designer, on research and innovation projects

Other Footwear Related Services

• We are more than just a shoe design consultancy, we can give you advice on shoe careers, help train you or we can mentor you and give you advice regarding your business start–up.

Staff training and Careers advice

We now offer additional services, based on common requests. Perhaps you run a clothing company and you want to offer shoes, but you want to train your existing design team to work with footwear suppliers? Perhaps you are involved in careers advice and education? Perhaps you want to learn how to use Cad software to design shoes and prepare specs? Perhaps you need some coaching in footwear design? Or need some help learning to write techs?

• We can work with your existing design team and teach them how to work with footwear suppliers and coach them on the preparation of footwear tech packs.
• We can work with you to show you how to use different types of design software to present your shoe designs.
• We can help with careers advice and we can give talks and hold workshops in your school or college.
• We can help you evaluate your footwear design portfolio and give you advice to improve it.

Business start-up consultations

We offer a 30 minute free-of-charge video call in order to evaluate your project, but often we know that you need to know more. We can offer an extended evaluation call of 1 hour or more at our usual hourly rate. If you pay our travel we can come to you and spend an hour or two, or an entire day helping you to brainstorm your concept for a footwear brand. If you want to evaluate our design skills, in advance of designing your footwear range, we're happy to do pre work - perhaps a one day research project or a few hours or a day of design concepts, again charged at our usual hourly rate. We don't undertake speculative/evaluation projects free of charge, we think our 30+ years of shoe design skills are of great value, so please don't ask. We think that all designers, whether rookie or expert, should be respected and paid for their work The only time we don't charge for our skills is when it's for charity.