Reebok names Thomas Steinbrück Creative Director

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Oct 22, 2016

Reebok announced on Friday that Thomas Steinbrück has been appointed Creative Director. According to Steinbrück’s LinkedIn, he has been with the company in this role since August 2016.

 
The Studio Bercot graduate served as Creative Director of Porsche Design Group and most recently served as Chief Creative & Chief Marketing Officer Of Liebeskind Berlin. Steinbrück also held design positions at Christian Dior, Geoffrey Beene, Elie Saab and Kenneth Cole, and he ran his own namesake fashion label from 1997 to 2002.
 
As Creative Director, Steinbrück will oversee Reebok’s apparel and footwear collections.

In addition to the Creative Director appointment, Reebok recently introduced its Liquid Factory manufacturing innovation that uses robots to draw shoes in three dimensions. The new technique leverages 3D Drawing to draw shoes in clean three-dimensional layers to create unique footwear without the use of traditional molds.

“Footwear manufacturing hasn't dramatically changed over the last 30 years,” said Bill McInnis, Head of Future at Reebok and a former NASA engineer. “Every shoe, from every brand is created using molds - an expensive, time-consuming process. With Liquid Factory, we wanted to fundamentally change the way that shoes are made, creating a new method to manufacture shoes without molds."

Reebok launched the Reebok Liquid Speed, the first concept shoe born from this method, with a limited release of 300 individually numbered pairs retailing for $189.50.
 
"With this new process," McInnis continued, "We were able to program robots to create the entire shoe outsole, without molds, by drawing in layers with a high-energy liquid material to create the first ever energy-return outsole, which performs dramatically better than a typical rubber outsole. The all new Liquid Factory process is also used to create a unique fit system that stretches and molds around the foot, providing a three dimensional fit.”