Dass Footwear Creation Center
Creativity, business, innovation, and sustainability coexist in spaces designed to inspire, motivate and conceive new ideas. The footwear development center, the Dass Footwear Creation Center, located in Ivoti/RS, is the place where designers and developers work with our brands. A true creative hub focused on anticipating needs, technologies, styles, and trends.
The Dass Group is committed to global reference standards, under strict compliance rules of the brands we work with, having exclusive spaces and teams to serve each client, with access control and information security measures. In addition, our employees, upon joining the company, sign a Confidentiality Agreement as an addendum to their Employment Contract.
In our spaces, in addition to generating business, we carry out research related to the application of technology and improvements to our production processes, as well as the creation of collections aligned with the main trends, manufacturing of prototypes with a high degree of automation, development of molds and matrices with 3D digital printing tools, in addition to creating and adapting new materials.
Footwear Production Chain
In the footwear production chain, Dass is involved from the design and production of sole matrices, with a complete steel and aluminum foundry, continuing with the production of soles using different technologies, such as EVA, rubber, thermoplastic injection, including the in-house production of knit uppers.
Our footwear factories are based on lean production methods and the use of the most modern technologies available in the sector, to deliver high quality and performance products.
Creation and Development
A team specialized in creation (design), (technical) development and validating processes, production techniques and materials together with laboratory teams, prototype factories and production for licensed brands and Private Label clients.
- Permanent search for innovation, new technologies and processes and their validation.
- Constant cost-benefit research for products.
- Challenges the interaction between the areas and people of the Dass Footwear Creation Center so that they can effectively generate a competitive advantage.
- Obtain products that meet our customers' needs in a competitive manner.
- Predict and resolve possible production problems.
Supply Chain
Dass Group has Gravasul, its own matrix and injection molding factory, focused on the footwear segment, located in Novo Hamburgo/RS, a city known as the National Footwear Capital.
Gravasul has an autonomous die factory, with fully verticalized processes and in-house steel casting – unique in Brazil –, making it a major differentiator in the industry. Due to this, it is one of the few matrices approved to serve giant sports footwear brands in the country.
Dass designs and produces molds for cast steel and aluminum soles according to customer needs and demands, as well as injected thermoplastic components, such as: PVC, TPU, TR and TPE, specific for sports shoes.
Through the internal development of 3D projects for soles and technical components, and the vertically integrated manufacturing of molds via Dass Gravasul, the Company ensures greater confidentiality in the contracted project processes and reliability in delivery deadlines. This is achieved by not outsourcing any stage, meaning that no part of the process is developed by third-party companies, i.e. outside of Dass Group’s industrial units.
At its Knit unit, located in Ivoti/RS, the Dass Group has loom technologies for footwear.
Among them are the straight ones where the vamps are produced for various models of sneakers that make up the collections of the brands served by the Company. Most of the pieces are made of polyester and elastane, giving flexibility and comfort to the final product.
In addition, it has a circular loom that produces tubular fabric, also used to produce the vamps for shoes. Unlike straight vamps where the piece comes out ready-made, in circular uppers the fabric comes out in a roll with the upper design on top, which subsequently goes through the dubbing and cutting process.
The Dass footwear unit, located in Vitória da Conquista/BA, is dedicated to the production of sole components for footwear. Since 2004, it has been producing soles for other Dass units in this segment, enabling them to assemble the footwear. With over 33,000 m², it produces thousands of components daily to meet our clients’ demands.
DASS GROUP
3D
Dass Group has a specialized team that develops 3D projects for soles and technical parts, which will later be used to manufacture the molds used in the production of sole components.
- 100% development in a 3D digital environment.
- Possibility of simulations of injections and mold movement.
- Almost assertive predictions of the features of a sole.
- Development of new sole manufacturing techniques.
- Rapid prototyping to make projects viable.
DASS GROUP
Laboratories
Dass Group has different laboratories, in addition to the Prototype Factory, which aims to simulate, test, evaluate, and guarantee the quality of the product developed and produced by our employees. From quality control, samples of all shipments to be sent to customers are evaluated.
Furthermore, all production processes are regularly checked. Check out the laboratories below:
Prototype Factory: production line of footwear prototypes for testing and approval, before the start of series production and sales samples.
Materials Laboratory: real physical and chemical tests to guarantee the quality of process materials, providing resistance and finishing.
Physical Testing Laboratory: are structured spaces designed to conduct tests on materials, components, and finished footwear, based on our own procedures and those specified by our clients. Through these processes, we evaluate structural resistance properties, dye and pigment fixation, bonding processes, among other factors, aiming to ensure the quality of Dass’s products. The Physical Testing Laboratories have direct interaction with product development teams, suppliers, and clients, and are located at the Dass Footwear Creation Center. Serving Dass Group’s managed brands as well as Private Label clients, these spaces also disseminate knowledge to the Dass manufacturing unit laboratories.
Biomechanics Laboratory: the only Biomechanics Laboratory of a private company, in the footwear industry, in all of Latin America, located at the Dass Footwear Creation Center. The research carried out here allows us to better understand the interaction of each shoe with the human body and, as a result, develop increasingly better, more comfortable products with a high level of performance for athletes. This work is carried out together with the Development teams, from the beginning of the project, bringing benefits and improvements to the product. The laboratory serves Dass Group management brands, as well as Private Label customers.
DASS GROUP
Manufacturing Units
Our industrial park has state-of-the-art equipment and advanced technology, operated in accordance with strict criteria of quality, safety, and respect for the environment.
In the footwear production chain, Dass Group has ten manufacturing units, eight in Brazil and two in Argentina.
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