14 DAY TRIAL // Nike is one of the most famous shoe brands in the world, but Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder and the CEO of Jelly, thinks it's only a matter of time before it stops producing shoes in factories.
According to him, by the time 10 years have passed, Nike will be a purely software company.
Its R&D specialists and designers will be totally focused on making 3D models of shoes. It will be up to customers to get the models printed.
Well, either that or Nike itself will buy a few dozen 3D printers, or more, and use them to create each shoe from multi-color filament.
It's not just Nike that may go through this transformation either. 3D printing technology will supposedly replace everything eventually, except maybe carpentry. It's just a question of when.
Of course, it might take longer than some hope (the father of 3D printing did say that 3D printing hype was overblown), but it's definitely possible for something like this to occur.
After that, we'll be left with a dual industry: the half made of 3D printers, and half concerned with making newer and better ones.
Well, maybe textiles will last unto infinity, but we've already heard about 3D printed fabrics, so it's a tossup even there.