Sneakart

Roll up, Roll up read all about it....SoleHeaven welcomes Sneakart to the Custom Kicks Series

Normally we reserve space in the Custom Kicks Series for customizers who design, hand paint or ink a base shoe from scratch, but Sneakart approached us and asked if they could design a piece and show us what their innovative Sneakskin™ was all about.
In all honesty we were pretty dubious about the idea. We thought it was just some guy's with a bunch of stickers and the finished product would look like the inside of a 5 year olds Power Rangers sticker book....but, boy were we wrong!

Yes these are stickers, but not as we know it. This is a new innovative film which is stretchy and flexible with really good adhesion. The best bit is that any image/pattern or design can be printed on, so the scope for design is endless. for example you could take some shots of your favourite graffiti pieces get it printed on to the Sneakskin™ and apply directly to you kicks. How cool is that!

We understand better than most that tradional sneaker customizers have true artist skills & talent, and have the ability to execute hand painted detail on to minute areas of a shoe....but we also understand that 99% of people don't posses either the vision, creative ability or the skill to customize, let alone all 3 and this is where Sneakart can offer something different.

Customizers fear not, this can never compete with what you’re doing, or the talent you're demonstrating. People will always want & desire unique & hand painted sneakers. No doubt!
Sneakart is just something different. It's low cost, fun, the designs are interchangeable.

Applying the Sneakskin™ takes some skill, a steady hand and some patients....we can prove this by some of our efforts here at SoleHeaven. They're right at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, we interviewed Sneakart, and here’s what they had to say…

Who are Sneakart?

Sneakart is mostly made up of a bunch of designers and a business brain. Ollie, who had the idea for Sneakskin™, is a footwear designer who’s worked at various companies including adidas and most recently was a design manager at Puma. Zoe, who generally runs the company, used to be a clothing designer also at adidas and other places. Chris who did the design for sole heaven is a recent graduate from St Martins who can design pretty much anything. Don't ask us to do any financial stuff that's what we have the brain for!

What exactly is Sneakskin™?

Sneakskin™is a super thin, durable and flexible sticky film. It’s waterproof and will stand up to normal daily use for a good few months. Because sneakskin™ is flexible, it flexes with the shoe and won’t wrinkle when you wear it. People don’t believe how good it is until they see it for real, you can’t tell its a sticker when it’s on the shoe. We’re going to start offfering free samples on our site so people can believe the hype!

How does it work?

All you have to do is just peel it off and stick it on! There are different ways of applying sneakskin™ depending on the type of look you want to go for. For quick and easy effects, you can use straight stickers which don’t require any skill – or for a Pro style effect you can use Pattern Sheet to cover whole panels. This requires a little more practise but not a lot.

How did this innovation come about...what was your inspiration?

We love what highly skilled customizers do with sneakers but we know from experience this is a really difficult skill to learn and to do well. A lot of people have ideas but don’t have the practical artistic skill to make it happen on a shoe. Sneakskin™ is for anyone who loves sneakers and wants to create their own look quickly and easily. Customizers and people doing photoshop customs can also use sneakart to print out their ideas to test on shoes, maybe before committing to paint. It’s much cheaper than messing up a pair of kicks.

Was the development process of the Sneakskin™ littered with pitfalls?

Erm, yes. You name it, it’s happened. It was so hard to get the film right, we’ve been working on this for years. The biggest challenges were finding the best thickness of film with the right amount of flexibility and elasticity. Then there’s the glue – it needed to be strong enough to stay on the shoe when you wear it, but easy to remove and not damage the shoe when you want to change it. We’ve worked really hard to now have a film that works really well.

Can anyone design their own Sneakskin or do they have to buy from the catalogue?

Anyone can upload artwork and as long as it’s in the right format we’ll print and ship it out for them within days of receiving it. You can choose for your design to stay private and exclusive to you but you can also request for it to go public. This means, if accepted, it will be shown for sale on our site and the artist will earn royalties from any sale.

Is it easy to switch designs if you get bored of the same one?

It’s really easy, you just carefully peel the film back, maybe clean your shoes a bit if they need it, then re-apply another design. If you keep the templates you made for that shoe (in the special folder you get) second time round will be even quicker.

What’s the life expectancy like?...if you wore a pair out on a saturday night out, and hit a few pubs/bars and onto a club would they survive the experience?

That would be no problem, you would even protect your shoes from beer splashes and pub crap.

Could they handle a stag weekend of Karting, Downhill biking and 2 days of bar crawling?

We haven’t tried out that specific combination yet but from from our experience we reckon it would work! Our shoes have seen plenty of action and still look good. Hardcore skateboarding might not work so well as shoes get beaten about and scraped against things but most other normal stuff should be fine.

If you want to get your Free samples or just find out more about Sneakart visit their site www.sneakart.com

If you're customizing, and want to showcase your work. contact us on dale@soleheaven.com