How this Japanese founder created smart LED shoes and is planning to scale it

A photo of Yuya Kikukawa.

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This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Disrupting Japan where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with Japanese entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

Most good startups are obvious. You can understand right away the problem they are solving for their customers and how they’re doing it. Naturally, that makes it easier for customers to buy. On the other hand, there are startups that are still struggling to find product-market fit.

And then, there are products like Orphe, LED-emblazoned, wifi- and social sharing-capable dancing shoes. Yes, it sounds like something you would find on Indiegogo. But when I sat down with Yuya Kikukawa, founder of No New Folk Studio and creator of Orphe, it became clear that this was not some quirky side project or some overfunded crazy hardware startup.

We talked about the original inspiration for the shoes and how it is being used in Japan. We also dove into its technology. Here’s our discussion.

nCan you describe what Orphe is exactly? n

Orphe is kind of the world’s first smart LED shoes. Smart means it has a computer inside of the sole, and at the same time, there are about 100 full-color LED lights. The computer can control each pixel, so the user can change the color through the smartphone application. The idea for this product is combining musical instrument functions and LED shoes.

The shoes have nine-axis motion sensors: three accelerometers, three gyroscopes, and three compasses.

Photo credit: Orphe’s website.

nnHow does Orphe work?n

Our main target customers are dancers and performers. Orphe can react with performance motion like dance steps. There were already some users before Orphe wearing LED shoes and dancing, but the shoes didn’t react with motion and music. Our shoes can send information and their lights can be controlled with a step.

There’s also a social sharing component. Users can download the lighting pattern from the cloud, but the motion sharing is not open yet. It is an important idea because we are a more open platform now. For example, we are developing the system to enable sharing of sensor data.

nDo you have global competition now? n

In the genre of smart shoes, there are some startups. For example, Under Armor is making smart running shoes that have a sensor in the sole. There are also other competitors. But we’re more targeted at performance arts, at least for the moment.

nHow did you go from wanting to make musical instruments to making musical shoes?n

In graduate school, I majored in industrial art design and studied designing musical interface in a laboratory. At that time, I came across the idea of mixing light and sound in one musical interface. So, PocoPoco, an instrument, is one example. It is black and box-shaped and it is like a sequencer to make loop music. Just by pushing the buttons, it makes some loop sounds and lights up at the same time. It has a haptic interaction. Haptic means it has a solenoid magnetic power actuator.

After the prototype, we made a video about it and it got good feedback from around the world. So after that, I thought of commercializing the product, but there’s a problem in design, which is very costly. We realized it’s not good to turn it into a business. So, I thought of a product that is good for merchandise.

nIt’s hard to get people to make music on something new. What do you think?n

I think there are two ways to solve the problem. One is creating a more intuitive interaction design. For example, with our shoes, people know how to walk wearing shoes, so the gesture is already learned by the user, and I took advantage of this.

Another way is using IoT. My lab idea for PocoPoco was collecting the sensor data from the interface so I can improve the interactions for the musical instrument. But it was just a lab idea, as it took several hundred years to improve the guitar. I wanted to make the feedback an automatic system to improve the instrument.

nCan you tell us about the prototype for Orphe?n

It was a very dirty prototype, to be honest. We used a pair of Converse All Star shoes and taped LED lights around the sole. We used Arduino. Then, there’s a micro-controller, YRS, and pressure sensor in-sole. It’s just a dirty prototype.

But the reaction was pretty good. When I made a step, it reacted to it, lit up, and wirelessly sent the information to the computer. The computer, then, made some sound and visual feedback.

After being at the Musical Hack Day in Barcelona, I was seriously thinking about commercializing the musical shoes. I discussed the idea with Abba Labo (incubation for IoT companies), and they decided to help and funded us.

nWhat were the challenges of going into production? n

It was a challenge putting all the electric parts inside the shoes, as they were all placed outside the shoes in the prototype, so we had to study the mechanism of the shoes.

Durability is also the biggest problem. I bought many LED shoes and broke a lot of them, studying the inside of the shoes. We had to make many, many models through 3D printing and with silicon. We made so many prototype soles.

nWhat is your team like?n

We’re seven now in the team. Most of them are engineers—half of the team deals with hardware and the other half deals with software.

nHow are you going to make sure that the shoes are not just another fad?n

At first, we concentrated on making a niche product, but my concept is not just about making LED shoes. The important point is there are inputs and outputs and we provide the open SDK to the developers. So, any developer can do interaction design for the shoes.

After releasing the shoes, a lot of people wanted to collaborate with us, so now, we are developing shoes for the healthcare industry. We are working with medical doctors in creating shoes that can teach people how to improve their walking habits.

We also released the SDK on the Unity game library and we built a sample application. Now, we are looking to collaborate to make Dance Dance Revolution.

We are also looking for partners, as we’re just selling the shoes only in Japan. There are some department stores, but we don’t have enough partners to distribute Orphe worldwide.

nIf you can make things better for startups in Japan, what would you change? n

In Japan, a lot of people think we need more startups and challenges, so they’re supportive when you start addressing a challenge. But people are harsh when you fail. I want to change that atmosphere. People have to be kinder to the challengers.

There are many hardware startups that are able to release their concept but couldn’t release the hardware as a mass product. Maybe the environment here in Japan is very severe to release a mass product.

nFinal thoughtsn

Kikukawa also gave some good advice about when to abandon a hardware startup or any kind of startup. The trick is not to follow your passion. Despite what everyone tells you, simply following your passion is the express lane to failure. What you want to do is to be passionate about following your users’ passions.

Like most founders, Kikukawa was passionate about his first project, PocoPoco, but he set it aside when user response was only lukewarm. Only when he saw the passionate reaction of potential users to Orphe did he know he was onto something. It’s a delicate balance, of course. You might have something that is truly transformational and it might take a while for your customers to get that. But remember that it’s not about your passion, it’s about your customers’ passion.

Kikukawa’s scaling strategy is smart and it’s kind of a trend among Japanese hardware startups today. It’s relatively inexpensive for startups to create prototypes and go into small lot production, selling thousands of units. Taking things to the next level (i.e. moving into a real mass market with hundreds of thousands or even millions of units), however, still takes some serious capital.

Dedicated machines need to be purchased, custom production lines configured, and a supply chain developed and managed. Successful US startups have access to that kind of capital, but at the moment, Japanese startups don’t. So, the best way for them to scale is to license their technology or their entire product to larger companies capable of mass production. This is a good and a necessary step, but I think it’s a temporary one.

While the CEOs of the previous generation were perfectly happy to have their technology quietly and invisibly power some of the world’s greatest brands, many hardware startup founders today think differently. They take their inspiration from Akio Morita, the founder of Sony who famously and steadfastly refused all licensing and OEM deals.

Morita insisted that Sony products only be sold under the Sony brand. And this may come as a surprise to millennials, but at the time of Morita’s death in 1999, Sony had the best consumer brand in the US, far ahead of icons like Coca Cola, GE, or Apple. And as more and more growth capital becomes available to Japanese IoT startups, we’re going to see a lot more Japanese brand names come into their own around the world.

Read more from this series here.