ASICS Furniture Looks Nothing Like ASICS Sneakers
The minds at ASICS already cracked the code for making old shoes into new products. The ASICS NEOCURVE came first, a 2024 sneaker made entirely of discarded shoes ground up into new materials. Next, the Japanese sportswear giant is utilizing that same technology for furniture. And it looks nothing like sneakers.
Karimoku New Standard (KNS), a sub-label of high-end Japanese furniture maker Karimoku, is collaborating with ASICS on a new line of very office-y and not very sneaker-y chairs.
The exteriors are formed from plain-woven fabric provided by two leading upholstery textile manufacturers, the Danish company Kvadrat and the American brand Maharam. But the insides? They’re all sneaker.
Surplus and defective ASICS sneakers destined for disposal were crushed up and ground into soft EVA foam repurposed for the chair cushions, hiding the sporty origins inside some very classic seats.
There are two opposing styles on hand, the curved and amply cushioned Polar Lounge Chair that's offered with and without a wooden side table and the square-shaped Castor chair, where the sneaker-infused seat cushions are encased in a pure oak wood frame.
Both chairs, available for pre-order on Karimoku's website for ¥216,700 and ¥257,400 ($1,373 to $1,630), moonlight as relatively simple home furnishing.
Unlike in comparable projects, like Nike’s impossible-to-find Herman Miller shell chair collaboration or Chinese design studio BENTU's recycled rubber stools made of old sholes, the ASICS x KNS lounge chairs hide their cutting-edge upcycled sneaker material on the inside.
Unless you happen to notice the tiny ASICS-branded tag on the side, you’d have no idea you were sitting on old sneakers.
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