Kylian Mbappé left Nike after ~20 years with the brand and joined On Running. Mbappé reportedly turned down a 10-year $200m deal from Nike. He’ll get On equity and launch its football category (overseen by Thierry Henry). He was spotted wearing On’s wild spray-on shoe technology (LightSpray), a process inspired by glue guns that greatly reduces shoe making time with max customization fit potential: ▫️It takes 3 minutes to finish the upper part of the shoe (see video of running shoe sample) vs. 3 hours with stitching ▫️A single person can operate the machine vs. 100 people on a normal shoe assembly line (and only has 7 parts vs. ~150 to 200) ▫️LightSpray using parametric design principles, and computational engineering (instead of traditional pattern makers). How? Per NYT, a robot arm sprays “a single semi-translucent synthetic monofilament almost a mile long” on to a shoe mold to finish the upper (which is then “heat-fused to a foam rubber and carbon fibre sole”). Hellen Obiri won the 2024 Boston Marathon and 2025 New York Marathon while she wore a version of the LightSpray shoes. Very interested how these shoes perform on soccer pitch. *** The Athletic on Mbappe: NYT on LightSpray: