中文The Chemical Giant That Wants to Redesign How Your Shoes Are Made
You probably don’t think about BASF when you lace up your sneakers in the morning. But if one of their executives is right about where the footwear industry is heading, that’s about to change — and it could reshape how every shoe you own gets made.
Amir Pourirani, the marketing director for TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) in Asia Pacific at BASF Performance Materials, just laid out a vision that’s equal parts ambitious and pragmatic. His core argument: the footwear industry is moving from a “material-selection mindset” to a “system-design mindset.” And if you’re not clear on what that means, you’re not alone — but you should care.
The Old Way vs. The New Way
Here’s how shoe design has worked for decades. A designer sketches a shoe. An engineer picks materials that fit the sketch. A factory figures out how to put it all together. Each step is more or less independent. The material supplier’s job? Show up with a spec sheet and hope they get picked.
That approach is breaking down. The question isn’t just “which material performs best” anymore. It’s “does this material support automation? Can it reduce waste? Will it make manufacturing faster? Does the consumer actually notice the difference?”
Pourirani calls this the shift to system-design thinking, and it changes everything about how material suppliers like BASF work. Instead of responding to a technical specification, they need to understand “product ambition.” What is this shoe trying to be? Who’s it for? What manufacturing process will make it? Answer those questions, and the right material becomes obvious.
The GripTeC Example
BASF’s Elastollan GripTec is a good case study. Outsoles — the bottom part of the shoe that hits the pavement — have always involved trade-offs. Better grip usually means faster wear. More durability usually means less flexibility. Easier manufacturing usually means uglier design.
GripTec tries to break those trade-offs by combining grip, abrasion resistance, and design flexibility in one material system. Transparency, color effects, geometric freedom — stuff that used to require a separate layer or a completely different material — all possible from the same base.
Independent testing by Intertek found that GripTec has roughly 40% lower carbon footprint at the manufacturing stage compared to conventional rubber outsoles. That’s not a marketing claim. That’s a third-party validated number. And in 2026, when every brand is scrambling to back up sustainability claims with actual data, those numbers matter.
Co-Creation, Not Just Supply
What’s interesting about BASF’s approach is the emphasis on co-creation. They’re not just shipping materials to factories. They’re sitting down with developers, molders, component makers, and brands at the earliest stages of product development.
Pourirani is explicit about this: suppliers need to understand “not only the needs of our direct customers, but also the expectations of our customers’ customers.” That’s a fundamentally different relationship than the old buy-sell dynamic.
He even floated the idea of co-branding — where the material itself becomes part of the product’s story to consumers. Think “Intel Inside” but for your sneakers. It sounds gimmicky, but when consumers actually understand and value what’s in their products, premium materials command premium prices.
Automation Is the Accelerator
Pourirani sees automation as the force that will force this shift. When shoes have to be designed for robotic assembly, you can’t just swap materials at the last minute. The material, the design, and the manufacturing process have to be developed together from day one.
He points to “bottom unit concepts” — where the midsole and outsole are engineered as a single functional system rather than separate components. The goal is to produce complete bottom units in one or very few processing steps. Less assembly. Less variability. Less waste. Lower environmental footprint. And it all has to work reliably at industrial scale — not just in a lab prototype.
The Sustainability Math
Pourirani was refreshingly direct about where sustainability is heading: “claims alone are no longer enough.” Brands are being forced to do the math — carbon impact, processing effects, comparisons with existing solutions. Life cycle assessments and product carbon footprint calculations are becoming “a more objective basis for decision-making.”
He predicted that “credible data will become as important to material adoption as physical performance data is today.” That’s a bold claim, but it tracks with where regulation (especially in Europe) and consumer expectations are heading.
What This Means for Shoes
The takeaway is simple but profound: the shoes of 2030 won’t just be designed differently. They’ll be designed — from the molecule up — by different kinds of partnerships. Chemical companies, brands, factories, and designers working together from the start, making decisions with the whole system in mind.
For consumers, it means shoes that perform better, last longer, and come with a more honest environmental story. For the industry, it means the old way of working is running out of time.
Source: World Footwear — “Amir Pourirani from BASF Performance Materials: the industry is moving to a system-design mindset,” June 2026
