01
One shop, the whole product
We are a pioneering digital design and engineering and hybrid fabrication (DDE/HF) workshop. We take great pride in blending old-school traditional craftsmanship, hand woodworking and metalworking, with modern digital tools: 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC mills, and more. We are makers and artisans at heart, but we also bring the rigor and discipline of professional design and engineering to every project.
What sets us apart is that we are a one-stop shop. We design and build entire products, from mechanical and electrical components to electronics hardware, including custom circuit boards and embedded firmware, and software such as AI and machine learning algorithms, IoT cloud services, and mobile applications.
02
How it all started
We launched Green Shoe Garage in 2012 as an embedded electronics design studio. Our initial focus was rapid prototyping the digital brains of the smart devices we now all use every day. We built prototypes, designed circuit boards, and wrote secure and efficient firmware, then handed over the design files, source code, and hardware to clients who took it to industrial designers to incorporate the electronics into finished products.
Then our clients began to ask if we could just build everything. Not only the electronics and firmware, but the mechanical components as well. Could we integrate electronics, software, and mechanical parts into a finished object? It was a challenge we could not pass on.
03
Rethinking design and fabrication in a digital world
Shifting our focus from electronics alone to overall product development was not a decision made lightly. We had to ask two questions: what would set us apart from the competition, and what skills and tools would we need to invest in?
We knew from talking with our clients that they most valued our fast turnaround times and our ability to deliver on budget. Most fabrication shops focus only on mechanical and structural work, and electronics design houses rely on offshore manufacturing. So we had to find ways to design and build mechanical and electrical work in-house, in a highly integrated manner, and do both more efficiently than anyone else.
We already had limited in-house mechanical capability for items like test jigs, and we expanded it project by project. 3D design and 3D printing came early and integrated well into our circuit-board workflows. As we added woodworking, metalworking, leatherworking, vacuum forming, and resins, we developed old-school hands-on skills while investing in modern CNC machines to increase efficiency and repeatability wherever feasible. Today we are experts at blending the traditional with modern tools, and we deliver finished products on time and on budget.
