PUMA Mongolian Shoe BBQ

In March 2005 Puma unveiled their Mongolian Shoe BBQ—an in-store sneaker customization experience where you pick out actual parts and they get shipped off and sewn in to shoes. I saw this for the first time yesterday at PUMA in Glasgow.

Now Puma is doing it again, this time with the RS-100, their 80s running shoe. And this time, in addition to being a touring, in-store experience, there's an online version. The site matches the original process of picking parts and laying them out on a tray, tightly maintaining the Mongolian BBQ metaphor. Though the process of picking colors and materials for over 20 different bits of the shoe is tedious, it's fun and thoughtful resulting in a more deliberate design. As you're building you can preview the shoe in a photorealistic viewer, then when you're done you get a full screen version to inspect.