New Balance Apparel Innovation Lead

NB-DATA DRIVEN DESIGN FOR RIO 2016

Boston, MA
The data driven design project came out of the knowledge back in 2012 that data, whether it was personal quantified data or big data, would be driving design and New Balance would need a story around this for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

At the time I was one of two NB innovation team members collaborating with MIT's Tangible Media Lab project Biologic, which in part generated our idea to work with thermal body mapping.

Over a series of months working with the sports lab our team mapped Male elite bodies and Female Elite runner bodies, aggregated the data, and generated an intelligent mesh matrix. Working with an innovative circular knit factory we changed knitting programs to create exact mathematical tubes with mesh placement for thermal optimization.

This became a part of the Apparel Kit for New Balance athletes competing in the Rio Games.

NB-BEACON JACKET 2013 AND RUNNING

The Beacon Jacket was developed over a series of 15 months starting in 2011 through intensive research and development, as the pilot project for the Apparel Innovation team at New Balance. Early stages included collaborations with the Department of Transportation, Conspicuity Scientists, local university track teams and material developers across the US.

The product successfully achieved the goals of breaking into the visibility market with a new angle, three tiers of visibility, a look that is uniquely New Balance and a head to toe visibility product, which had the unique perspective of fashion appeal through the design and technology we developed.

(Some of the press coverage from the first few months around the launch of the Beacon Visibility Run Jacket, including coverage by Outside Magazine and ESPN's holiday gift guide.)

NB-USA MADE APPAREL

The "Made in the USA 990 Apparel" was the first consumer facing collection made in the USA ever created at New Balance. 

We leveraged our deep military contacts in manufacturing, within the innovation team, and looked to the heritage of one of the classic New Balance shoes, the 990 for a story.  The DNA of this shoe, and the brand story it tells, generated a collection of women's and men's garments and graphic T's which spoke of heritage craftsmanship and comfort in wear.

Press coverage and photo shoots of the 990 collection were extensive. The idea for the 990 collection came out of a design exercise which I did to examine what the iconic 990 shoe would be, manifested in apparel, going deeper than aesthetics, into how and where it would be made, the materials, who would it appeal to and why, to dig really deep into what makes New Balance unique and powerful as a brand.