New Balance opens sports research lab
October 28th 2008
New Balance has opened a new Sports Research Lab in its Lawrence, MA, facility. The modern 3,000- square-foot facility houses state-of-the-art biomechanics equipment, office space, a 120-foot runningtrack, 30 foot by 30 foot court and smash lab. The facility will focus on technology and product testing, innovation research, education and will host customer visits. Previously, New Balance tested biomechanics through a long-standing relationship with the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Although the company will continue to maintain that relationship to keep its strong outside perspective into footwear technology, the move brings biomechanics testing inhouse to help drive product development. “It’s one thing to get a biomechanics report that tells what ‘Shoe A’ is doing versus ‘Shoe B’ and it’s another thing to be conducting it inhouse,� Sean Murphy, manager of advanced products advertising for New Balance, tells Performance Sports Retailer. “We’ll have the athletes right here and the designers and developers interacting with those athletes. So that helps them understand their problems more intimately and develop empathy for the issues they’re having. Just being able to look at highspeed video up close, they really understand, ‘Oh, this is what the numbers mean!� The smash lab is maintained and managed by two University of Massachusetts-Amherst PhD candidates, Trampas TenBroek and Pedro Rodrigues. TenBroek, who has become manager of sports research at New Balance, said New Balance has long worked with Dr. Joseph Hamill, his advisor at U. Mass., to test product, but he agrees that moving such testing in-house enhances collaboration with design. “It’s not far for the developers and designers to come to U. Mass, but it’s a lot easier to go down a few flights of stairs and be able to see all this get done and interact with athletes as it’s being done,� says TenBroek. “They can just gain so much information from all that than they can from a report that was generated and sent back to them.�
Source : SportsOneSource
