Adidas and AMSilk create spider silk-based shoe prototypes, but have been held back by limited levels of fiber production

August 16, 2018 | Case Study

AMSilk, one of the leaders in the synthetic spider silk space, and Adidas began developing shoe prototypes incorporating a synthetic spider silk in 2014, but did not officially announce their collaboration until late 2016 with the Adidas Futurecraft Biofabric shoe. Adidas claims that the shoe prototypes are 15% lighter than comparable running shoes, strong, durable, nonallergenic, and vegan. Also, owners will be able to dissolve the shoe (minus the soles) in a sink by using a digestion enzyme provided by Adidas. When the shoe is placed in water with a high enough concentration of this digestion enzyme, it will cause the spider silk upper to decompose within 36 hours.