At first glance, On’s new LightSpray facility outside Busan doesn’t look like a shoe factory at all; there are no stacks of fabric, no sewing machines, hardly any people in sight. Instead, 32 industrial robots move in near-perfect synchrony, spraying filament onto shoe lasts with choreographed precision, creating the LightSpray running shoes in just three minutes.

For On, this factory represents the clearest expression yet of a long-term ambition. The company wants to compress years of development, months of logistics, and hundreds of manufacturing steps into a single, automated system. Manufacturing, rethought from the ground up and built around speed, precision, and proximity to runners.

In the factory, shoes move from station to station. One robot sprays the upper, another guides it forward, and a third prints the logo. A handful of technicians monitor the process from control panels, adjusting parameters in real time. On does not disclose daily output figures. What we know is, following its 2025 four-robot pilot facility in Zurich, Busan is designed to increase LightSpray capacity thirtyfold in 2026, pushing out hundreds of thousands of sneakers annually.

“This is what we imagined for a long time,” says On co-founder Caspar Coppetti. “A place where we are completely in control of quality, speed, and precision. It’s calm, focused, and built around the runner.”

In comparison, a conventional shoe factory would need around 200 workers to match this level of output. In Busan, each upper is built from a proprietary TPEU filament, sprayed in a lasso-like motion around the last. Around 1.5 meters of specialized filament are applied to form a seamless structure in minutes. A finished pair weighs about 420 grams. It uses no glue, produces almost no waste, and emits 70 percent fewer carbon emissions than traditional construction.

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Remarkably, the entire LightSpray technology and system were developed in-house. What they were looking for had yet to be developed in the existing market, so robots, spray paths, and software were all built by On’s own engineers.

“The question was basically: can we spray a sock?” Coppetti recalls. “Can we create something that fits like fabric, but is made entirely through technology?” For nearly two years, the team tested the concept by hand. “We did it manually, literally what the robot is doing today. And then we asked ourselves: how do we automate this?”

With no blueprint to follow, development was tedious and uncertain. Scaling robotic footwear meant creating an entirely new manufacturing language, one capable of synchronizing dozens of machines while maintaining consistent quality. In the factory, quality control is among the only tasks still done by human hands. However, Chief Innovation Officer Scott Maguire says automation was never the final objective.

“We truly want to innovate within sports,” he explains. “There has to be a deeper purpose. It’s about creating something that genuinely improves people’s experience of movement and health.” In Busan, new sizes can now be programmed in minutes rather than weeks, and designs refined through simulation instead of extended trial cycles.

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LightSpray first earned its credibility at the highest level of competition. At the Paris Olympics, Kenyan distance runner Hellen Obiri raced in On’s Cloudboom Strike LS, becoming the first Olympic marathon medalist to compete in a LightSpray upper. The shoe, with its distinctive visual language, made headlines for its uniqueness and marked a visible shift in attention toward how elite performance footwear is made.

Later, Obiri went on to win the Boston Marathon wearing the same technology. Her success placed LightSpray firmly within the modern “supershoe” era, where innovation has reshaped elite running. But for On, podium validation was only the beginning. The company’s ambition has always extended far beyond professional sport.

Co-founder Oliver Bernhard sees the bigger picture. “We want to address as many people as possible,” he says. “It speaks to confidence, design, and performance.” For him, LightSpray represents the next major platform after CloudTec, designed to scale innovation to everyday runners.

The first model produced at scale in Busan is the LightSpray Cloudmonster 3 Hyper. Designed as a “super trainer” for long and tempo runs, it marks LightSpray’s expansion from racing into daily training. Bernhard himself has logged more than 1,000 kilometers in prototypes. “You only trust something after you test it,” he says.

As LightSpray reaches a wider audience, On is positioning the technology beyond pure performance. Collaborations and new drops are planned for 2026, and the company states that it has so far revealed only three percent of LightSpray’s long-term potential.

Much of that future is rooted in restraint. “A lot of design is reduction,” Coppetti says. With fewer components and no layered upper construction, LightSpray strips footwear back to its essentials. Simplicity, he believes, will define the next era of performance design. This is what he calls the future.

Though On sees potential for LightSpray shoes in lifestyle use, Bernhard is clear that this appeal remains secondary. “We always start from performance,” he says. “If lifestyle follows, that’s great. But it’s never where we begin.” Function leads, and form follows. “People want real technology and real performance,” says Coppetti.

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This desire to disrupt the status quo and push the boundaries of running performance is why On was founded in the first place. “I hope we never will be the establishment,” Bernhard says. “We will always be the challenger. I have to acknowledge, of course, that we are a bigger company now. But for me, it’s about mindset. We shall never lose the spirit of being a challenger.” Maguire adds, “We are happy to be the underdog.”

Across the world, On is continuing to scale and plan a worldwide expansion of LightSpray manufacturing in the coming years. The company teases that exciting developments are underway and that the opening of its first Korean factory is only the beginning.