How to use this
The weekly rhythm
25 hours a week, split roughly:
| Block | Hours | What |
|---|---|---|
| Study | 6 | Reading, video, teardowns, note-taking against the module’s concepts |
| Make | 12 | The hands-on exercises — drawing, patterning, spreadsheet building, sample review |
| Reach out | 4 | Emails to factories, suppliers, material reps, potential mentors. This is the block people skip. Don’t. |
| Write | 3 | Your build log (below), plus the module deliverable |
The “reach out” block is non-negotiable and starts in Week 1, not Week 11. Supplier and factory relationships have a lead time measured in months. If you wait until you have a finished design to start emailing, you will lose eight weeks waiting for replies you could have already had.
Every module has the same skeleton
- Objective — what you can do afterwards that you couldn’t before
- Why it matters commercially — the money or risk consequence of not knowing this
- Core concepts — the actual content
- Do this — exercises with hour estimates
- Deliverable — a concrete artifact, added to your capstone folder
- Self-check — questions you should be able to answer cold
- Traps — the specific ways beginners get burned here
The build log
Keep a single running document from Week 1. Every week, write:
- What I learned that contradicted what I assumed
- Decisions I made and why (with the option I rejected)
- Open questions and who I need to ask
- Money spent this week, running total
This is not journaling. Three things depend on it: your tech pack accuracy, your ability to answer a factory’s “why did you spec it this way” question, and — later — your ability to tell the brand’s story truthfully, which is the only kind of brand story that survives contact with customers.
What to buy in Week 1
Starter kit, ~$180–350.
- 3 used sneakers to destroy, from a thrift store — deliberately different constructions: one vulcanized (Vans/Converse type), one cemented cupsole (skate or court shoe), one modern foam runner. $30–60.
- A hacksaw or Japanese pull saw, a sharp utility knife with spare blades, and a bench vice or clamp. $50–80.
- Digital calipers (0.01mm) and a flexible tape measure. $25–40.
- One pair of stock lasts in your sample size (typically US 9 men’s / EU 42) — search “shoe last HDPE” or ask a factory to send a pair. $30–90 including shipping.
- A dissection notebook (dot grid, A4) and a set of fineliners. $20.
- Optional but excellent: 1kg of scrap upper leather and a few sheets of 2mm and 4mm EVA foam. $40–70.
Everything else — software, patterns, materials — is introduced when the module needs it.
Software you’ll accumulate
| When | Tool | Cost | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| W7 | Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer | $23/mo or $70 once | Industry-standard for footwear line drawings and tech packs |
| W7 | Procreate (iPad) or any sketching app | $13 once | Fast ideation on last profile templates |
| W9 | Google Sheets / Excel | free | BOM, costing sheet, cashflow — genuinely more important than the CAD |
| W13 | A shared drive (Drive/Dropbox) | free tier | Factories work in email + shared folders, not in Figma |
| W22 | Shopify | $39/mo | Only start paying when you’re within 6 weeks of selling |
You do not need 3D CAD (Rhino, Modo, Clo3D) or footwear pattern CAD (Shoemaster, Romans CAD, ICad3D+) for your first shoe. Factories pattern from a good 2D tech pack every day. Module 8 explains when 3D starts paying for itself.
A note on honesty with yourself
Two failure modes kill first brands, and both are avoidable by being blunt in your build log:
- Designing something you cannot make. A design that requires custom tooling, exotic materials or a construction your factory has never run is not a design; it’s a wish. Constraint-first design is a skill and Module 7 treats it as one.
- Confusing an audience with a market. People liking your Instagram is not evidence they will pay $140. Module 19 forces you to test the difference with money before you commit to a run.