159: Chapter 164 Technology Records Life

After the press conference, the hallway was packed with tech media and bloggers; some were chasing Liu Hu to ask about the price of the OnePlus 3, while others were crowding around the product manager to touch the prototype.

The car drove out of the museum and turned onto Sunset Boulevard.

Chen Mo was leaning against the car window, watching the palm trees retreat one by one, when the phone in his pocket vibrated.

A call from Xiuying.

In the background, there was the muffled sound of Chen Jianguo chopping ribs in the kitchen and the faint evening news from the neighbor's television.

"That OnePlus phone of yours, can you buy one for me? We can't buy them here."

"It hasn't gone on sale yet, I'll ask Liu Hu to send you one."

"Is it too much trouble?" Xiuying was always worried about such things.

Chen Mo sent a message and the address to Liu Hu, saying, "It's no trouble, we are friends."

"Does Dad want one too?" Chen Mo asked again, having almost forgotten about him.

Xiuying laughed and said, "If it's not too much trouble, he wants one too. He's been fussing with his Apple phone lately and listening to your album every day."

"Why didn't you ask me? Tim sent me the entire Apple product suite, and I can't even use them all," Chen Mo said with a smile, "Tim is the boss of Apple."

Xiuying kept saying, "My son is successful. You can bring them back for the New Year, and you can even give them as gifts. When are you coming back?"

Before Chen Mo could answer, he heard his mother say again, "We moved. We moved to Tianxin District, to the house your dad bought years ago. Sigh! You haven't lived there yet. He said it's all because you're too famous."

Chen Mo chuckled and then said, "On New Year's Eve, I should be home by midnight, but you can watch the Spring Festival Gala while waiting for me."

Xiuying agreed repeatedly and went on to talk about what New Year's goods she had bought, how the cured meat was this year, and that the new neighbors were easy to get along with.

January 26th, Los Angeles. The Anta North American headquarters is in Irvine, about a forty-minute drive from Chen Mo's apartment.

The entire building was surrounded by palm trees and an artificial lake, its glass curtain walls reflecting the lazy winter sunlight of California.

Standing at the entrance of the building was a giant poster—

It was the silhouette of Chen Mo taken in the Grammy Awards rehearsal room, wearing the white Anta "dont stop" collaboration sneakers.

Scott parked the car in the space, turned off the engine, and spoke with a hint of pride.

"Ding Shizhong flew over himself. He's the founder of Anta. He doesn't usually come to the United States, but he came specifically for this collaboration series. Do you know what this means?"

Chen Mo unbuckled his seatbelt and said, "It means I tied my shoelaces correctly."

Scott ignored him, pushed open the car door, and walked into the building.

"You're just being unserious."

In the center of the showroom stood a huge white shoe cabinet, with built-in LED light strips illuminating every pair of the collaboration sneakers.

Chen Mo walked up to that pair of white sneakers and stopped.

Embroidered on the tongue were two characters, "dont stop," with strokes identical to the ones he had written with a marker for that school-uniformed boy at the Anta fan meeting back then.

The vertical hook was a bit crooked, and the corner of the horizontal turn tilted slightly upward—it was his old habit when writing.

He stood in front of the shoe cabinet, bent down, and touched those characters.

"This font is what I wrote; they just enlarged it."

His fingertips lingered on the tongue, sliding gently down along the crooked vertical hook.

Anta founder Ding Shizhong walked over from the other side, wearing a dark blue suit without a tie, but his hair was meticulously combed, and his handshake was firm.

He didn't look like a slick professional manager; there was more of a groundedness about him, forged in a factory workshop.

"'dont stop' doesn't just belong to you; it belongs to everyone who doesn't give up."

Chen Mo picked up the white pair from the shoe cabinet and weighed it in his hand.

The sole used Anta's latest nitrogen technology midsole; he had seen it once in the lab before, but this one was the mass-produced version, and it felt lighter in his hand than last time.

Chen Mo placed the shoe on his knee and looked down at it for a long time, then stood up, closed the shoebox, and tucked it under his arm.

Scott reminded him from the side to at least sign it, but Chen Mo didn't even turn his head.

"I've already signed it. One look and you can tell it's my handwriting."

Scott exchanged a look with Ding Shizhong.

Ding Shizhong paused, then turned to the designer next to him and said, "No need to change the sample with the white tongue. Once the sizes are filled in, release it according to this version."

After the showroom tour, Ding Shizhong didn't take Chen Mo to the VIP room for tea, but instead led him through two security doors into the core area of the Anta North American Design Center.

The entire floor was open-plan, and the walls were covered with concept boards for the next quarter—

fabric swatches, color cards, hand-drawn sketches, and several enlarged heat maps of marathon runners' foot pressure.

The air was filled with a faint scent of glue and fresh textile fabric, and a few designers were gathered around a long table, arguing endlessly about the curvature of a running shoe sole.

Ding Shizhong stopped at the long table, picked up an uncolored running shoe sample, and handed it to Chen Mo.

"This is the main model for next spring, still in the R&D stage. The 'dont stop' pair on your feet is a collaboration model, while this one is a mass-market product for the global market. What do you think?"

Chen Mo took the shoe and flipped it over to look at the sole. The nitrogen technology material in the midsole was thicker than the previous generation, yet it was lighter in weight.

The knit pattern of the upper was brand new; he felt the stitching on the reinforced area of the toe with his hand.

"The reinforced toe area is too narrow. You're targeting the global market, not just professional runners who buy these shoes. When ordinary people run, their toe pressure points are more dispersed than professional runners because their running form isn't standard—because I'm one of them."

"When I run ten kilometers on a treadmill, the spot where the toe wears out is to the right of the standard pressure zone because my right foot unconsciously rolls outward when landing. You could expand the reinforced area outward by one centimeter; ordinary people would find these shoes more durable."

The designers at the long table fell silent simultaneously. Among them, a female designer with short purple hair tucked her marker behind her ear and marked the toe curve with her thumb.

Chen Mo handed the shoe back to Ding Shizhong and looked down at the collaboration pair on his own feet again.

"For the 'dont stop' model, you embroidered my characters on the tongue, which is very iconic. Sales will be very good because it's something I wrote; consumers will think of me, think of China, and think of the United States."

Chen Mo held the running shoe, not being modest at all, yet hitting the nail on the head.

"The design of this mass-market shoe was done by Anta. The craftsmanship is refined, but it's too similar to competing products on the market. If I saw this shoe on a shelf, I would think it's a good shoe, but I wouldn't think it's Anta."

Ding Shizhong put the sample shoe back on the long table, had the designer note down the suggestion to expand the reinforced toe area by one centimeter, and then turned to Chen Mo.

"You just said 'wouldn't think it's Anta.' What do you think Anta should be like?"

Chen Mo leaned against the edge of the long table, his fingers resting on the edge of the color cards on the table, and spoke eloquently.

"Anta should be recognizable at a glance—not through the logo, but directly through materials and craftsmanship. China has its own traditional crafts, such as embroidery, silk, and bamboo weaving."

"Of course, you don't need to move these elements onto the shoe surface as a whole; that would be too blunt and not suitable for daily wear in the American market."

"But you can use high-tech fabrics to simulate embroidery. For example, with this knit material on the upper, can you create the texture of embroidery? For instance, using 3D knitting technology to simulate the texture and layering of embroidery. From a distance, it looks like a modern high-tech running shoe, but up close, one can find the shadows of traditional Chinese patterns in the knit."

"This feeling is 'Guochao.' When Americans buy this shoe, they won't realize it's a Chinese pattern, but they will have a feeling of 'this shoe is different.'"

The purple-haired designer picked up the marker again and transcribed his description in English on the whiteboard nearby. After writing "textured weave with cloud motif," she looked back at Ding Shizhong and clicked the cap.

"CEO, we discussed this direction before, but at the time we felt the process was too complex and the cost would be hard to keep down. But what Chen Mo just mentioned is knitting—using a loom to weave the texture into the fabric."

Ding Shizhong braced his hands on the edge of the long table, leaned over, picked up the running shoe sample he had just put on the table, and asked, "Cost—how much would it cost to develop a cloud-pattern-like knit from scratch?"