Scan Magazine | Design | AIRTOX
Founder Henrik Boe Wiingaard-Madsen with an S-LINE safety trainer, which is comparable to regular trainers but with all the necessary features that qualify them as safety shoes by European standards.
Intoxicating comfort Using highly advanced technologies, AIRTOX, a Danish innovator within work and safety shoes, has come up with a new and different approach to professional footwear. The result, comfortable and trendy safety trainers, has been received with so much enthusiasm that when the company recently added regular sneakers to its collection, they sold out in less than two months. By Signe Hansen | Photos: AIRTOX
When it comes to the safety footwear worn in millions of workplaces including kitchens, factories and construction sites, neither comfort nor style have previously been given much priority. In fact, due to the many statutory standards that have to be adhered to, safety shoes are often heavy, inflexible and without any reflection of current trends. However, among the approximately ten per cent of people (in the developed world) who use this kind of footwear, many have been longing for something different. 12 | Issue 82 | November 2015
Thus, to enable the workforce to stay healthy, comfortable and, at the same time, happy with their looks, Henrik Boe Wiingaard-Madsen decided to set up AIRTOX. “The idea with AIRTOX was to create the ultimate safety shoe and then twist the design so that it would look more like a regular trainer or sports shoe. But at the same time, because of all the new technology, we have created shoes that are really comfortable; you could say that the design and branding are targeted at the more trend-focused
young crowd while the quality and comfort will appeal to almost everyone. What we have is a premium product, the like of which has not been seen in this industry before,” says the CEO, who has more than 20 years’ experience within the industry. The result means that even though workers have to wear the same pair of shoes for eight to ten hours every day, they can feel comfortable at all times and are more likely to avoid joint or back injuries later on.
Impenetrable and lightweight One might wonder how much technology can actually be involved in the creation of a shoe. The answer is a great deal. AIRTOX implements a total of five patented technologies, and the result is a shoe