Last week, sportswear behemoth Adidas announced plans to begin manufacturing sneakers in the USA.
The brand is developing a 74,000-square-foot facility in Atlanta called the “Speedfactory,” which will rely almost entirely on robots for assembly. Not only will the automated production increase turn-around time, the assembly itself will be occurring closer to sales outlets, which means more shoes on store shelves, faster.
Slated for a 2017 completion date, the Speedfactory is expected to churn out 50,000 sneakers in its first six months, and it will create approximately 160 manufacturing jobs in the Atlanta area.
While the figures are impressive, and the facility seems a practical solution to rising global production costs, there’s been no mention of how the Speedfactory will effect the myriad developing regions that have come to depend on Adidas for employment. In 2015 the brand employed over 1 million workers across the continent of Asia alone, and produced upwards of 300 million pairs of shoes.
To read more about Adidas’ soon-to-launch Speedfactory, head over to GQ.
