ISlide: sports and slide sandals unite
Where customization meets premium footwear
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ISlide is a footwear company founded by Justin Kittredge, an industry veteran with 20 years of experience. They create and sell customized products — high-quality, custom athletic slide sandals and socks. Consumers unleash their creativity by adding text as well as their favorite sports teams or brands’ logos to the items. |
| Key information | |
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| Company launch | 2013 |
| HQ | Boston, Massachusetts, USA |
| Workforce | 50 people |
| Gravotech machines in use today | LS100 laser table with Gravotouch |
| Collaborating with Gravotech since | 2022 |
Two key business aspects allow ISlide to provide customers with impactful products:
- customization – customers showcase their individual style and express themselves through unique and emotionally meaningful products;
- licensed products – from popular brands like Warner Bros and Nickelodeon to major sports leagues (NBA, MLB, NHL, etc.), ISlide’s over 50 licenses allow the brand to offer a wide range of options to suit all tastes.
ISlide mainly sells online. But since its launch in 2013, it has also strategically placed pop-up stores in major retail outlets. The goal is to give loyal customers the opportunity to instantly personalize their favorite products with a laser engraving machine.
In this case, the NBA official store located in the heart of New York City on 5th Avenue has dedicated a section to ISlide. Thanks to that type of technology, basketball fans get to customize their sandals with the logo of the team they support!
However, after setting up the first personalization solution, ISlide recognized they needed to reconsider the type of machine used in order to achieve a better in-store user experience. To that end, they quickly contacted Gravotech to help them implement another solution — one more precise, more compact and more efficient.
ISlide’s business challenges
Perfecting in-store customer experience…
Fostering an emotional connection with their customers was no challenge for ISlide. Such is the advantage of print on demand products: they offer products that customers already love.
The issue was rather ensuring that in-store engravings would be :
- visually attractive
- quick to create
- customer-engaging
ISlide struggled to find the right solution to achieve these goals.
… with a retail-suited solution
ISlide’s existing engraving solution set up at the NBA store was not delivering the expected results in terms of precision, quality, and marking time.
These issues pushed them to look for another machine — one that met the following criteria:
- compact, to fit into their limited space;
- easy to use for all employees, even with minimal training;
- limits unpleasant odors caused by engraving certain materials, such as vegan leather, and prevents them from spreading throughout the store;
- with a short engraving time and process, which used to take over 20 minutes;
- meets safety standards for public use.
Gravotech for ISlide: the right solution for the right environment
A short project deployment timeline
The new engraving solution for ISlide’s NBA pop-up store was very quickly implemented. It was added to their system in 3 weeks. Of course, in order to achieve perfect results in adequation with ISlide’s needs, it still needed to be fine-tuned — a process which lasted less than 3 months.
Meet Gravotouch software
One of Gravotech's key differentiators is its Gravotouch software. Its customized catalog offers the client’s specific brand elements and product colors, enabling employees to easily use an in-store engraving machine.
The software provides 3 key benefits:
- Designed specifically for retail environments, it features a customizable interface tailored to the client’s brand aesthetic.
- It allows companies to showcase an up-to-date extensive catalog of customizable products.
- It is easy to use and configure, straightforward and intuitive for users of all skill levels — a major selling point for major luxury retailers.
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“When analyzing the customer’s customization project, we carefully examine the technology and type of solutions that best match their expectations and constraints. This thorough selection process ensures that we provide the ideal product to meet our clients' specific needs.”
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Meet the LS100 machine
Why did Gravotech choose the LS100 for this project? Because it was the ideal solution for the product ISlide wanted to customize. It is compact, easy to install and easy to use.
Some other key benefits of the LS100 for ISlide include:
- its laser and size — the laser was the smallest one available with an engraving area large enough to fit their products and offer in-store employees a lot of space to handle the process;
- its speed — its engraving time being much faster than their previous machine;
- its efficient extraction system which eliminates unpleasant odors, an improvement in favor or employees’ health;
- its compliance with safety standards for the public and customers, an important selling point for retail environments — the laser automatically shuts off when the machine doors are opened.
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“When analyzing the customer’s customization project, we carefully examine the technology and type of solutions that best match their expectations and constraints. This thorough selection process ensures that we provide the ideal product to meet our clients' specific needs.”
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Extensive technical support for high quality engraving
Gravotech and ISlide worked together in order to achieve an exceptional engraving quality while respecting the integrity of the engraved materials, through:
- a series of tests — both teams worked hand-in-hand to carry them out thoroughly;
- on-site technician visits — a Gravotech technician visited the ISlide’s pop-up in the NBA store several times to carry out and adjust engraving tests;
- tight deadlines — Gravotech adapted to provide ISlide with the fast and efficient support they needed. It took only a few days to install the engraving machine at the store — a technician quickly came to unpack and set up the solution.
- training when the machine is installed. It lasted less than an hour. The intuitive, user-friendly interface of the Gravotouch software with which the solution was equipped is to thank for this efficiency!
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“It was our extensive knowledge and experience across multiple applications and projects that enabled us to make informed recommendations.” Brian McAfee, Gravotech Global Key Account Manager |
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A key step covered was how to master product placement in the machine — an essential step to achieve optimal engraving results. And even that was made easy, thanks to:
- the various possible positions for the slides being marked down within the machine, indicating to employees exactly how to insert them;
- these same positions having been configured in Gravotouch during the software setup — no need to reconfigure the parameters for each engraving operation!
This allowed ISlide’s team to confidently and efficiently take charge of the customization process.
A successful partnership
This collaboration has been a great success. The combination of the right solution from Gravotech and the right product from ISlide has proven to be a winning formula.
Most of all, Gravotech’s dedicated Gravotouch™ software has streamlined the engraving process, making it faster and easier. As a result:
- employees became more comfortable with using the solution;
- they offered customization services more willingly to customers;
- ISlide became more confident about offering a wide range of customization options to its customers.
Collaborating with Gravotech fostered a more convenient custom-engraving experience for ISlide, its employees and its customers.
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“Gravotech has been instrumental to us providing our customers with customized athletic slides, thanks to their comprehensive solution – a laser machine and application-specific software. Justin Kittredge, |
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Regardless of what your business may be, Gravotech’s team’s mastery of various engraving applications ensures they’ll pick the solution most fit for your company.
You too wish to offer your customers personalized products?
