Q&A: Steph Curry's signature shoe designer on launching new brand

How do you develop a new shoe, with new technology for a new brand in the middle of a pandemic? And to make the task that much harder, how do you deliver it to market a year or two before you planned in time for a season that doesn’t have a firm start date?

That was the challenge the Under Armour performance team faced as it tried to meet the high level of expectations and high level of play of Stephen Curry for his new signature shoe.

Curry’s latest signature shoe, and the first shoe launched under Curry Brand, the Curry Flow 8 was “the unicorn” the company has been working on for over three years. That work consisted of 13 rounds of wear testing and 10 rounds of biomechanical testing with more than 100 athletes, including 35 elite college and high school basketball players, adding up to more than 1,500 hours of extensive testing. But the loudest voice on the look and feel of the shoe was the two-time NBA MVP and three-time NBA champion himself.

Coordinating it all was Tom Luedecke, Under Armour Innovation’s Director of Footwear Design, who took 24 flights from Baltimore to Beijing and everywhere in between in 2019 then had to pivot to working remotely like many others in 2020.

Before the Curry Flow 8 colourway “Feel Good Flow” global launch, Luedecke spoke to Sportsnet.ca about what it was like working in collaboration with a guy who is trying to change the shoe game for good.

This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.

Straight from the lab #Curry8 Flow 12.11.20 pic.twitter.com/UU0Bu3Spak

— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) December 5, 2020

Sportsnet.ca: The Curry Flow 8, the first sneaker under the Curry brand. Did that change the process of how this shoe came to life and how you approached it?

Tom Luedecke: I don’t think it changed the approach. We’re working with Curry, and he’s the best player out there as far as I’m concerned and really unique in how he plays and what he does. So, in that regard, not different. Now, you look at it through the lens of innovation, working with them directly, taking something all the way through, yes, very different, and it’s been a unique approach on this specific product. We showed Stephen a prototype of this in Walnut Creek, February 2019.

And we had a few variations of uppers on them, including his current upper on it, just to try out something that is more like a Franken-sneaker. We met on the court, so he was able to put the shoes on, go out, play and try the shoes out and kind of methodically went from being cautious and careful all the way to doing layups and dunks and hard cuts and so on.

And at the end of it, he dunked the ball, stood there, looked up at the ceiling, then looked at us and was like, “These are ridiculous. Like, what did you do?” And then following a half hour later, after we took him through all the technology, he goes, “This is going to be on the eight. Right?” And we meant for it to be on the nine. Maybe the 10. So, he was the one that said, “ASAP make this happen, this is what I want.”

And I think when you talk about it, was this different at that point? It became different.

SN: It’s been dubbed the most technically innovative basketball shoe, which is a pretty high bar to clear. In layman’s terms, what does that mean?

TL: So I think you’ve got to set the background to this statement. So, we looked at it down to 1922, the first time rubber was put on a sneaker. Which is where the term sneakers comes from. Chuck Taylor, All-Stars. And you went from leather soles to rubber soles. So here we are, 2020, 98 years later and we’re taking rubber off the basketball shoe. So, I think that’s where that statement is coming in as we’ve been relying on rubber as our go-to solution for grip and traction for almost 100 years. And what we’re doing here is we’re saying we have something that’s better.

We’ve deconstructed footwear completely and started with a flexible soft foam as the core rather than sort of a whole bunch of stuff that is stable and then trying to make it more flexible… Because everybody always starts with stability first. So, we started with flexible and soft first and then added just enough structure around it to make it really appropriate for basketball.

SN: Obviously the flow makes it different than any basketball shoe, never mind his previous signature shoes. His signature shoes the Curry 4 and the Curry 5 were both drastic turns but otherwise compare and contrast the eight to what you’ve created before?

TL: So it’s interesting you mention the four because we actually have the Curry 4 upper on that flow bottom as the first Frankenstein sneaker. We know he likes the four and it actually looked interesting as well to have those two together.

I worked on the Curry 2 [and] there has always been a focus on comfort and performance. Comfort comes with understanding how the foot moves and building for the foot, not just, “Hey, I want to put this thing over here because it looks cool,” right? So maybe I’m downplaying the role of the designer here. And that is maybe a little self-defeating, but that’s just how I work and really what it comes down to in the end.

As you have a biomechanics team, you have an engineering team — we have a great team in Taiwan and in China that work with us — and Stephen has met every single person on our team, including visiting them in Shenzhen last year. Our chemical engineer and our engineer on the ground being able to meet with him in person. That’s unique. No other company does that to get feedback on that level all along the way.

So, we met with him, I think, 13 times over the course of last year before COVID. And he got to see and feel and touch and wear every single prototype we built and each one of those created a feedback loop. To which by the end of it we knew what we built for him was exactly what he would want. So, it wasn’t like, “Here’s a sketch.”

You got to see it. Wear it. Feel it. And I think that’s what makes the eight so unique in that it was a complete collaboration from the get-go, not just in our team, but also with him and his team.

.@StephenCurry30 is guilty as charged. Introducing Curry Brand, inspired by Steph’s mission to CHANGE THE GAME FOR GOOD and powered by Under Armour. This is about investing in our communities and increasing access to youth sports. Learn more here https://t.co/DLAaezmvgD pic.twitter.com/P59ily5zjU

— Under Armour (@UnderArmour) December 1, 2020

SN: So, he’s had recently some high tech, you know, technology in his shoes, obviously, that hover in his shoes before flow. Specifically, is there the reasoning behind that term? Does it signify something specific that from a consumer standpoint, you should understand?

TL: Absolutely. And I think that you’re keying in on the core of our work. So, getting to flow, getting to flow state. Right. This effortless, “I don’t have any distractions. I am free to move. I am able to do the things I want to do. And I [don’t] have to think about anything else.” I mean, truly in flow state and able to make the shots and not feel distracted. That is ultimately the goal.

By building a product that is so good that the athlete forgets that it’s there is huge.

So that’s where that term comes from. But also, you look at the expression, aesthetically speaking, it’s just a continuous flow all the way around. Soft curves, flowing forms and sort of things wrapping up and around. There’s a flow to the entire design language as well. So, between how we wanted it to feel to how we made it look, flow is the core and the keyword of not just the technology.

SN: How does the weight compare to other shoes in the marketplace and the ones that you designed in the past?

TL: So we actually did this exercise recently in preparation for the interview. We’re right there with the lightest. [As for] the Curry products, (at) 12.2 ounces, it is mid. So, it’s slightly heavier than the Curry 5, which is, I think is three ounces lighter or so. And the five are low tops.

Part of being a basketball brand that goes into the performance space, we talk about weight and weight savings and optimized for weight. And we’re certainly aware of what things weigh as we build them. What I do want to emphasize, though, is you’re getting a lot more comfort out of the eight than previous shoes because we actually have a significant liner in there, a mesh that is really, really comfortable.

And the way the shoe locks down on the upper is a lot more comfortable. So, we know he works extremely hard, he cuts extremely hard and that beats up the foot. And we wanted to provide an extra layer of soft material around his foot so he can play the whole game without feeling beat up. So, it’s not lightweight for the sake of lightweight.

Our purpose is to bring comfort and performance together. And so, there are some things that need to be done in order to provide the comfort. So, I don’t want to build an 11 ounce or 10 ounce shoe that makes it feel like my feet are hurt after every game.

I want to build a shoe that feels amazing on the foot at the beginning of the game and at the end of the game.

SN: One of the things I loved about the Curry 6 was it had so many Easter eggs in it, hidden things that are part of the design story, but that didn’t interfere with the technology and the performance. Is there anything like that that people should be looking for in the eight?

TL: Certainly there are a couple of things that you have to keep in mind in terms of the idea of launching a new brand. So, we want to make sure every athlete putting this shoe on or picking it up, looking at it, sees a new logo, see something that is unique to Stephan and that is certainly the absolute key to me.

As we’re introducing a new brand with a new product, the new technology, we intentionally pulled back a little bit on the overt graphic storytelling of putting in kids’ names or, you know, moments in time in the past or MVP this or champion that kind of thing, like you’ve seen other brands do.

One of the subtle details is in the back of the heel, there are three stars on the top that are popped out, like they actually protrude out [and there’s] two stars that are in. That’s something that we picked up from his Underrated camp that he does. It’s a treatment that he does there. But do you know why there are three stars on that five-star circle?

SN: Because there are three-star recruits coming to the camp.

TL: Exactly.

It’s a three-star recruit on a five-star rating. So, Stephan was a three-star recruit coming into the NBA. So, this idea of the underdog from the get-go, by comparison, shorter player or smaller player, a lighter player, the babyface assassin that we saw in that with Davidson, you didn’t pick that kid to go be the player he is 10 years later. Right? There’s many, many write-ups out there that I’m sure you’ve written about it and others have.

But that is one of those things that signifies the journey for me, is you go back to this three-star recruit that now leads the league in so many forms.

The other one above that is “I can do all things.” So, instead of writing it on in handwriting and so on, it’s just this tiny little graphic detail that goes back to the idea [of] I can do all things. And that’s something that obviously we’ve used before on this product. Specifically, we’ve taken all that messengering down to really focus on the brand first and foremost, because it is a massive moment in time for him and for every player that chooses to put this shoe on.

It’s the start of something new.

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