Meet Omar Bailey, the sneaker genius who wants to revolutionise the sneaker industry

The visionary designer and entrepreneur who worked for Kayne West, Jay-Z and Lady Gaga is ready to democratize the sneaker industry, as he explained within Keanu Reeves’ series “Visionaries” and in his recently published book “Heart & Sole”

We have met Omar Bailey, 42, a footwear development pioneer and co-founder of FCTRY Lab, an innovative sneaker brand, a studio, and a prototyping lab based in Los Angeles.  

He is a trailblazing force in the footwear industry who has helped bridge the gap from conceptual design to physically wearable footwear during his extensive career. Together with co-founders Abhi Som and Ravi Bhaskaran, he aims to democratize sneaker creation, putting speed, equity, and access into the hands of creators rather than a few powerful shoe manufacturers. 

With over 20 years of global product development and manufacturing experience as a design engineer, he developed footwear for entertainers such as Jay-Z and Lady Gaga, along with athletes such as Karim Benzema, José Bautista and Jalen Ramsey, among others.  

His professional trajectory includes roles at renowned industry brands including New Balance, K-Swiss, Adidas and Timberland.  

The studio partners with creators across entertainment, sports and design to bring footwear from concept to the culture. From first sketch to first drop. 

His passion for sneakers led him across the globe—including China, India and Saudi Arabia—where he immersed himself in the local culture and gained a deep understanding of the bridge between design and contract manufacturing.

His journey into the world of footwear design commenced at the age of seven in his parents’ New York home, sketching out his earliest designs. Educated at esteemed institutions like the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and the College of Design, Architecture & Art at the University of Cincinnati, he honed his craft, pursuing degrees in industrial design. He was also the protagonist of a recent TV series shot by Keanu Reeves, and will soon publish a book about himself and his career. 

Despite his brilliant career and great achievements, he is a cool and easygoing person. We met him during Kingpins Amsterdam while he was wearing a baseball cap, thick-soled FCTRY Lab sneakers, and a workwear jacket made with a denim by Artistic Milliners/Cone Denim he had customized upon request. 

When did you start working in the sportswear business?  
I started drawing sneakers when I was seven years old, but officially I got into the business in 2003, when I did my first internship with New Balance.  

I’m 42. In the ’90s, there was a lot of violence in the communities that I grew up in, and a lot of kids wanted to steal Air Jordan sneakers. My family were immigrants from Jamaica. When my mom and dad learned of some of the problems that were happening around the shoes, they didn’t buy me the shoes because they didn’t want me to be a victim of the sort of violence or bad things. So, that’s why I started drawing shoes. That’s where sort of the passion and love started from–drawing the very thing that I couldn’t have. 

Then I went into art school, where I got to continue to express this passion, then got into university, where I studied industrial design. That led to me doing internships with New Balance, K-Swiss and Adidas. The first shoe that I created was a basketball shoe for New Balance in 2003. It was the first time I drew a shoe on a piece of paper and got to see it in reality–which was very cool for me. That’s how I  officially got into the shoe business.

And then? What happened? 

So, in 2006, when I finished school. I started my own business. It was a consulting company called Bright Ideas. Then I met two professional athletes–one was Allan Houston, a professional basketball player for the New York Knicks and probably one of the most popular Knicks of all time on that team, and another guy named Gary Sheffield, a professional baseball player who played for the New York Yankees and the Dodgers

I had the opportunity to design shoes for them. The significance of that project was that it brought me out to China for the first time. And that’s where I really got to understand the ins and outs of supply chain and manufacturing. 

I started as a designer, but that experience brought me to transition into more of a product engineer or a developer and really understand all the steps of the process and apply my design abilities. 

How was your experience at Yeezy, the sneaker brand founded by Kanye West? 
I was at Yeezy from 2019 to 2021. At that time we were developing new shoes at a pretty high and fast pace, and a lot of it was experimentation, testing and always trying new things. Being flexible and the ability to pivot are very important as a designer and as a creator for any product in general.  And I feel like that’s when you create the best things. Some of my favorite shoes that I’ve created have all sort of been like that. 

Did that experience help you to shorten footwear design and production times?  
For me, it’s about how you have a new idea and how you can execute it as fast as possible without spending six months developing it. So we managed to shorten that development time to less than a month, which allows us to move faster when it comes to production. 

Factories just want to produce and manufacture at scale. So they don’t have time to develop new ideas, test small millimeter-size changes and do this over and over and over again. 

So, after I founded my brand, FCTRY Lab, in 2022, it made me and my team able to develop these concepts, and being able to work through these design loops in our lab allowed us to finalize the concept and then pass that information on to the factory so that they can produce the idea that it is that we have.

That was actually something that we did at Yeezy. Kanye had really extraordinary ideas and wanted to execute those visions, but a lot of those ideas really needed the time and space. We were able to experiment with these things and share those learnings with the factory and scale it. That really helped speed things up and move things along.

Have you also tried innovative, productive techniques like 3D printing or sustainable material recycling?  

Oh yeah, all of the above. We currently use 3D printing in the capacity for development. That’s actually one of the methods that allows us to move very quickly. 

So by combining traditional development and prototyping with 3D printing, we can actually give real-time feedback.  

And we’re able to build something like that in a matter of days as opposed to traditional processes. We’re actually able to shorten that process from two months down to basically less than a week. So 3D printing plays a huge component in that for us.  

In terms of sustainability and materials, we’re going to be producing in the US this year mostly around foam products, but this is going to allow us to really play around with algae-based materials, bio-foams, maybe even re-grinding, re-purposing foam, and sort of re-molding it into new shapes and forms.

Actually, one of our shoes that’s on the market right now called the Ruffle Boot is a women’s shoe that we did with Collina Strada, a women’s designer brand of New York. Its sole is actually made out of sugarcane. So, we’re going to continue to build on that going forward.

 Where do you find inspiration for the shoes you design?  

I am mostly looking at the market and at the trends, and I travel a lot. Inspiration from anyone and everywhere. My eyes are always wide open, and I’m always just constantly taking in everything. 

Is there a success case you would like to speak about? 
My real pride is FCTRY Lab, my brand, and my lens. Take our Duck Boot, for example. We came out with a shoe last year called the Duck Boot that we launched with rapper NLE Choppa that did extremely well. It got over half a billion views and impressions on social media across all social media platforms. 

We did about a US$1 million in sales in just under two hours when the shoe first launched. And it made a huge viral impression on a lot of people. But the interesting thing about that shoe is that I didn’t invent the duck boot. It has been around since 1912, when L.L. Bean created the first version of it. 

What I wanted to do was create what a duck boot would look like in 2025 based on today’s current trends in fashion the way kids dress and wear their jeans and their pants.  

And I wanted to create a shoe that reflected that DNA of the classic duck boot but through sort of the lens of FCTRY Lab and what that vision might look like today. The result was this very big, sort of chunky but very comfortable boot with a very interesting shape and form we called the Duck Boot that got a lot of attention. 

So, inspiration can come from anywhere, but at the end of the day, it’s about taking that inspiration and running it through the Factory Lab lens and seeing what comes out on the other side. 

In the market of action sports and outdoor activities and so on, there is the need to make consumers feel like they are belonging to something. Does it also relate to your brand? 

Oh, yeah, of course. Right now we live in the “attention economy.” So everyone is trying to get the attention of an audience. But the way you do that today is you have to build a community and seek out the people who support your vision and believe in what you’re doing.  

I still don’t take for granted one moment when someone buys our shoes. Even at an event organized here in Amsterdam by Artistic Milliners x Cone Denim that I was speaking at, one of our customers showed up wearing our Duck Boot.  

It was really awesome. I’m on the other side of the world, here in Amsterdam, and to see a customer who is so loyal and so passionate and who got on a train for two hours to come listen to me speak wearing a shoe that I created.  

That’s community. That’s building relationships. That’s what matters at the end of the day and why, you know, I’m even doing this. 

So, yes, it’s important for us to continue to build that community and more things to continue to engage with it. 

Where are you selling? 
We are now selling only online. We have been in a few retailers so far–Saks Fifth Avenue, HBX, and HBX in Hong Kong–and we did a pop-up with Concepts in New York City and a few more, but I think the next stage for us is really taking that next step in scale and working with an even bigger retail partner.  

Are you selling in the US but also in Europe? 
Yeah, we’re selling all over the world. We ship all over the world right now. We sell in Asia, Asia Pacific, including Australia. Furthermore, we’ve shipped all over the world, but we’re looking to do more in the Middle East as well. The Middle East is very important to me.

Are there any other projects you’re involved with? 
Keanu Reeves, the actor and director, made a documentary about me and the company. It is part of a series—“Visionaries.” It came out on Roku, which is an American streaming platform like Netflix. Furthermore, it came out earlier this year, and I was super excited to be able to do it. 

Keanu Reeves and his partner Gard Hollinger have a brand called Arch Motorcycles, and they had me on the show telling my story about FCTRY Lab and about my background, and they interviewed my family and my teachers. It was awesome. 

Then I have a book coming out, actually, in January, a biography about my entire journey, starting with my father, who grew up in Jamaica, and he was a shoemaker as a teenager. I also speak of my parents, and then me growing up, and sort of all the challenges and things that I went through as a young man trying to sort of break into this industry and living in India and spending time in China and traveling all over the world in this shoe business.  

And then, obviously, my time went easy, and then I started FCTRY Lab. So, I’m really excited about that project, but most importantly, the youth, who I think would really appreciate a story like mine and just kind of showing that success doesn’t happen overnight and that you have to put the time in in order to get there.  

I think it’s okay to take, you know, 10, 15 or 20 years to build your career, which is exactly, you know, the timeline for me. 

What is the title of the book? 
It’s called Heart & Sole. 

What about the future of sportswear and sneakers?  
I think running shoes will continue to be cool. Among future trends, I recognize a style that was cool many years ago by a brand called MBT carrying thick soles, and I think they were way ahead of their time.  

Though above all what’s most important to people is comfort—whether it’s running shoes or training footwear—and great design. 

I think that creating larger silhouettes will continue to be strong, but speaking about my design, I try to keep things as simple as possible. Even the shoe that I am wearing right now is my signature shoe—the Obi-Wan with a big chunky sole. 

But it’s a very clean style both in terms of sole and upper. I think that complicated outsoles and designs could stop being around—they’re also very expensive to make right with all the different molded parts and components. 

I think that the leaders and trends are the ones who are not following the rules and who are doing things differently. When I was at Yeezy, Kanye wanted to go against what everybody else was doing. We were a seasonless brand, and we were making things that we felt like. I think the brands that set the trends are the ones that break the rules, and that’s exactly what we are.

We’re rule breakers, and we’re going to do what we feel like we think is cool.