Del Carmen Couture Footwear

Project Scope: Service Design, Digital Innovation, Product Design

Our opportunity came about through one key insight: people often sacrifice comfort for the sake of beauty when it comes to footwear. In fact, people buy shoes knowing that they do not fit properly, sometimes knowing that they hurt. Above all, brand and design will sell our shoes; potential for custom comfort at a luxury level will be the competitive advantage. Redefining what a couture brand looks like (taking a Jimmy Choo style shoe into a Nike ID type lab) in the footwear world—that was our ultimate goal.

With the trend towards customization and implementing new technologies to update old processes, we decided to move forward with attempting to create a shoe brand that could fill a market gap and take advantage of current trends.

Key Learning Moments:

• A brand pivot aimed towards creating a more unique signature
• Using the Business Model Canvas to hone in on key value propositions and lean start-up modelling
• Customer insights through interviews and ethnography driving market segmentation, targeting, positioning