Adidas just opened a futuristic new factory — and it will dramatically change how shoes are sold

The factory is completely automated, and designed to be able to speedily produce limited runs of customizable product or replenish the hottest product selling quickly during the same season.
Adidas said it can get shoes to market three times faster in a Speedfactory than with traditional means.
The Atlanta location is Adidas' second Speedfactory, with the first in Germany. In conjunction, Adidas said it hopes the two factories can produce one million pairs of shoes a year by 2020.
Adidas will continue to experiment with the Speedfactories, adding new technology and more automated processes to get to a goal of 50% of shoes made by with speedier methods.

Adidas' American Speedfactory is open for business.

The 74,000-square-foot facility in Cherokee County, Georgia, outside Atlanta, is now pumping out shoes using a completely automated digital manufacturing process.

The first shoes produced and sold from the factory, the new AM4NYC (Adidas made for New York City), created specifically for New York's urban streets, will go on sale Thursday.

The shoes were made for quickly changing directions on urban streets using Adidas sports-science data, and are an example of the combination of speed and flexibility the new factory offers, as well as its ability to create specific and custom footwear.

As the name implies, the Speedfactory is about speed

Gil Steyaert, an Adidas executive board member responsible for global operations, told Business Insider.

The apparel giant wants to create a total of one million shoes a year from both of its two Speedfactories — the Atlanta location as well as the first in Germany — by 2020.

That number is significant, but it's small compared to the total number of shoes Adidas makes each year — 403 million pairs of shoes in 2017, or more than a million a day on average.

As of now, the factory currently has about 150 employees. That relatively low number means it is economically feasible to have a factory in a country without an employee base full of highly skilled shoemakers.

Adidas wants to increase its speed in other ways

The second part of Adidas' speed strategy relates to infrastructure — something that's been under pressure in the US as Adidas' popularity has taken off, particularly

"When you grow more than 30% per year you push inevitably some infrastructure,"