From 7 to 10 July, ECCO Leather’s annual HOT-SHOP took place. Not at the company’s headquarter in the Netherlands, as usual, but in a digital, interactive workshop involving 150 people from 27 countries and across 10 different time zones.
For the past 12 years, ECCO Leather has been bringing together designers, futurists, artists, material specifiers, marketers and leather technicians from around the world in an exclusive workshop at ECCO Leather’s headquarters in Dongen, the Netherlands. Every year, the participants unite for an intensive 4-day workshop engineered to challenge conventional leather creation.
When they back in October 2019 decided that the theme for their next HOT-SHOP 13 would be Disruption, they had no idea that the world was about to be disrupted.
“The current situation around the world means that bringing people together from all over the world is out of the question, but ECCO Leather sees this as an opportunity to experiment with a long-held dream of working remotely on leather design, realising custom developments with short lead times and less waste,” explains Executive Vice President of ECCO Leather, Panos Mytaros.
So this year’s Hot-Shop is a custom developed digital interactive platform that allows the participants to remotely design and develop leathers. Together, they form a think tank of international creatives, fuelling an innovative and high powered platform of creation and networking.
The annual 4-day creative workshop is actually named THE EXPERIMENT. Among the features of the workshop was a 24/7 livestream connection with ECCO’s tannery in the Netherlands, and virtual rooms allowing participants to work alone or in groups to design leather concepts.
Read more about ECCO Leather at eccoleather.com.
About ECCO
ECCO is one of the world’s leading shoe brands, combining style and comfort. ECCO’s success is built on top-quality leathers and innovative technology. ECCO is a highly responsible company that owns and manages every aspect of the value chain from leather and shoe manufacturing to wholesale and retail activities. ECCO’s products are sold in 101 countries from over 2,250 ECCO shops and more than 14,000 sales points. ECCO is family-owned, founded in Denmark in 1963, and employs 25,500 people worldwide.