London
When sportswear and sports shoe giant Nike announced in February the launch of a revolutionary new running shoe which uses state-of-the-art integral knitting techniques to create a one piece upper, we published the following article - Nike Flyknit a seamlessly knitted running shoe! .
The article explains how the shoe upper is made using state-of-the art flat knitting technology and was our most read article since we launched Knitting Industry website in 2008 – by a long way!
The story created a real buzz around the industry and the social networks were busy with comments and discussions about Flyknit, so we decided to contact Nike to see if we could find out a bit more about how this exciting new product was being made and of course where it was going to be made.
Nike had announced that two versions of Flyknit would launch in July just in time for the London games, so we assumed that manufacturing would already be in place in order to meet anticipated demand.
We told Nike we had heard it had set up a manufacturing unit to produce the shoe uppers on Stoll flat knitting machines. We asked how many machines the company had or was planning to have. We also asked which model and gauge of machine the company was using and whether the unit was located at Nike’s HQ in Oregon.
