Karimoku New Standard fills sofas and chairs with crushed ASICS trainers

Karimoku New Standard has announced the global release of its KNS x ASICS Collaboration, a seating range cushioned with foam recovered from ASICS trainers that would otherwise have been discarded. The cushioning comes from deadstock and sample footwear, dismantled and crushed to extract the material inside.

The furniture maker used the same technique ASICS employs for its upcycled Neocurve trainers. Footwear is taken apart, sorted and crushed to yield Ethylene Vinyl Acetate, the flexible, light EVA foam that is normally used in midsoles, outsoles and footbeds.

Karimoku New Standard then blends that recovered EVA with cotton and pairs it with a three-millimetre condensed foam sheet. The result is what the maker calls a hybrid structure, and it forms the cushioning inside two of the brand's existing seating designs.

The two pieces are the Castor Lobby Sofa and the Polar Lounge Chair. Both now carry an embroidered tag marking the collaboration, a detail that signals the material swap without altering the silhouettes Karimoku New Standard already produces.

How the collaboration began

The collection was introduced in Japan earlier this year before reaching a wider market. Its starting point was practical: Karimoku New Standard was already working on the seating for the meeting spaces inside ASICS' Tokyo office when the two companies saw room to go further.

Karimoku New Standard described the process as rigorous. Working with ASICS and drawing on its sports-science expertise, the furniture maker repeatedly prototyped pieces and adjusted them for real office use, learning to turn shoe waste into seating that reads as genuine comfort.

The brand framed the outcome as more than a recycling exercise. Beyond merely reusing materials from a sustainability standpoint, it said, the hybrid structure turns recovered foam into a functional added value rather than a compromise made in the name of being responsible.

The maker's own language is direct on this point. An unfamiliar material like shoe waste had to be transformed into true furniture comfort, and the hands-on, uncompromising exploration is what produced the EVA-and-cotton layer now under the Castor and Polar.

Karimoku New Standard is a sub-brand of Karimoku, the Japanese furniture manufacturer with a long record of collaborating beyond its own catalogue. The maker has previously worked with names including Zaha Hadid Design, so a sportswear crossover sits comfortably inside its practice.

ASICS arrives on the project with its own history of designer partnerships. The sportswear firm recently released the minimalist Hyper Taping trainers with fashion label Issey Miyake, and it has also produced pastel-coloured trainers with Danish brand Hay.

That context matters to how this collaboration reads. Neither party is a stranger to crossing categories, but the KNS x ASICS range inverts the usual direction: the footwear brand lends its materials and sports science to a furniture object rather than the other way around.

The EVA at the centre of the project is a workhorse of athletic footwear, chosen for its lightness and flexibility as a midsole, outsole and footbed material. Lifting it out of unsold shoes and into a sofa cushion keeps those properties while giving the foam a second life.

Karimoku New Standard has not disclosed pricing or production numbers for the global release. What is public is the material story, and the maker is leading with it: the collaboration is presented as a model of how a discarded product can be remade into something marketable rather than melted down.

What the release adds

For readers who follow our coverage of collaborations across fashion and objects, this sits beside other recent crossovers in our pages. Where Loewe and On built performance-wear for working artists, and Rise & Fall worked with Completedworks on jewellery, Karimoku New Standard has applied the same logic to furniture.

The pattern in those stories is a maker pairing with a name outside its category and letting the outsider shape the object. Here the shape is ASICS' material science, and the result is a seating line whose selling point is what is inside the upholstery rather than what covers it.

The collaboration also lands at a moment when upcycling has moved from an experiment to a selling proposition in our coverage. A material recovered from product that would have been destroyed now does real work in a room, which is the kind of claim a furniture buyer can verify by sitting down.

What comes next is not yet public in the sources. Karimoku New Standard has announced the global release without setting out a schedule of retail locations or further pieces, so the two designs currently stand as the entire range rather than the first instalment of a series.