Swiss brand On has moved shoe production out of overseas factories and into a robot line. Its LightSpray system uses a single robotic arm and about 1.5 kilometres of filament to spray a one-piece running-shoe upper in roughly three minutes, with around 75 percent fewer carbon emissions than the brand’s other racing shoes and almost no cutting waste. The world’s first LightSpray facility opened in Zurich in 2025; in 2026 On added a 32-robot plant in Busan, South Korea, lifting capacity around thirtyfold. Where a new shoe once took months to move from drawing board to shelf, the process now compresses toward weeks — with production sitting close to the market rather than an ocean away.
So…:
Where could the distance between your own idea and a finished product shrink from months to weeks?
Source: fortune.com
Picture: On (press)