A stackable plastic shoe rack that competes against existing commodity shoe racks in price, but wins on function and style.

What existing shoe racks lack in style is made up for in affordability. This project was a challenge to create a shoe rack that delivered in both, while fitting with the Umbra brand. I was stuck on trying to develop an interesting form that would tile as a pattern when stacked.

Early sketches took inspiration from sneaker soles and other graphic patterns. The concept slowly evolved into attempting to create a form with plastic that fluidly united the metal rods. Inspired from bent wood furniture, I started to think of the form more three-dimensionally, and moved away from sketching patterns from a flat side view.

Borrowing from manufacturing techniques used for Umbra’s Buddy Hooks, I landed on the idea to hide the necessary structural ribs on the inside of the two plastic halves. I modeled and 3D printed the prototype with the proposed internal structure to best represent actual strength of final product.