3D printing footwear company Zellerfeld has announced a partnership with Volumental to connect precision foot scanning directly into its on-demand shoe manufacturing platform. Under the arrangement, foot geometry captured through Volumental’s in-store and mobile scanning experiences feeds into Zellerfeld’s 3D printing pipeline, allowing each shoe to be produced to the specific contours of an individual customer’s foot.
Zellerfeld evaluated foot-scanning providers globally before selecting Volumental. Precision of measurement, accuracy of the resulting 3D foot model, and ease of customer use all factored into the decision.
Volumental’s 66 million scans and why Zellerfeld picked them
Volumental’s foot-scanning platform is deployed across thousands of retail locations in more than 60 countries, serving brands including New Balance, Fleet Feet, The Athlete’s Foot, and FootJoy, and has accumulated more than 66 million foot scans globally.
“We looked at every credible 3D foot-scanning option in the world before selecting Volumental,” said Zellerfeld Founder and CEO Cornelius Schmitt. “They have spent more than a decade building the fit technology layer the footwear industry needs.”
Volumental CEO Alper Aydemir said: “Zellerfeld has built something the footwear industry has talked about for twenty years and never actually delivered at scale: shoes manufactured to your foot, not the average foot. For that to work, the foot data has to be right.”
Foot data quality as the limiting factor in scan-to-print footwear
Scan-to-print footwear has been gaining traction across the industry, but foot data quality has not kept pace with advances on the manufacturing side. Standard shoe sizing has never reflected the actual diversity of human foot anatomy, and the industry has treated that gap as a commercial inconvenience rather than a design problem worth solving. Smartphone scanning has lowered the barrier to capturing foot geometry, but the precision it delivers varies depending on the underlying technology, and for a shoe being manufactured that difference is significant.
What is changing is the combination of two converging technologies: smartphone-based 3D scanning, which removes the need for a clinical visit to capture precise foot geometry, and AM, which allows that data to be translated directly into a custom-manufactured product. Companies including Fitasy have developed scan-to-print processes that generate a 3D foot model using spatial AI and smartphone imaging, while HEZO‘s 1,000 data-point foot scan feeds into a shoe built to the customer’s exact measurements.
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