TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates to materials obscured by a concealing layer and used to construct footwear articles.

BACKGROUND

Materials having various observable properties (e.g., color, surface texture, surface finish, etc.) may be used to manufacture footwear articles, including in the footwear upper, footwear sole, or any combination thereof. Sometimes, it may be desirable to obscure an observable property of a material (e.g., substrate), such as for design or other reasons. In addition, the ability to obscure an observable property of a material (at least temporarily) may permit the material to be used to construct a footwear article, when the material may not have otherwise been usable. However, conventional techniques for obscuring an observable property of a material may not produce a desired effect, such as when the color of the material affects a color of the concealing layer, when there are impediments to affixing a concealing layer to the material, or when it may be challenging to at least temporarily affix a concealing layer to the material for a desired duration.

Footwear-article manufacturing may be separated into multiple stages, such as a material-supply stage and a footwear-manufacturing stage. Typically, material suppliers source and/or produce materials, and footwear manufacturers use those materials to construct footwear articles. Materials produced or supplied for construction may include one or more characteristics (e.g., a color, composition, surface texture, thickness, etc.) that are specified or distinctive based on manufacturing standards, construction requirements, design specifications, etc. of a designated footwear article. These characteristics, however, may make it difficult for those already produced materials to be used to construct alternative footwear articles, which may not include the characteristics.

Additionally, materials are often supplied to footwear manufacturers in sufficient quantities to account for potential material losses (i.e., material lost from die cutting, construction errors, quality compliance, etc.) and to ensure that large-scale production runs of designated footwear articles can be completed. Because of this, large amounts of materials may be on hand during footwear construction, and as a result, excess materials are often (e.g., seasonally, annually, etc.) generated by routine changes in manufacturing circumstances and consumer demands that are associated with common events, such as holidays, seasonal weather changes, sporting competitions, and the like. Every so often, excess materials are also generated by unpredictable disruptions in supply chains, reductions in manufacturing capacity, and/or declines in consumer demands that are caused by rare events (e.g., natural disasters, global pandemics, shifts in public perception, etc.).

On account of the above, each stage associated with footwear manufacturing, from the supply chain on down, has a potential to generate substantial amounts of excess materials, such as overstock rolls, discontinued colorways, scraps, and the like. In some instances, storing excess materials may be cost-prohibitive and impractical, especially when the excess materials are of a large quantity and have characteristics (e.g., an uncommon color, surface finish, or material type that is part of a discontinued colorway or footwear design) that limit usefulness to construct other footwear articles not including those characteristics. Thus, excess materials are frequently returned to material suppliers and are often designated for disposal by materials suppliers (or other participants in the footwear-manufacturing chain), since the costs of storage may outweigh potential benefits. Consequently, much of the excess materials generated by footwear-article manufacturing end-up being disposed of (e.g., discarded, thrown away, incinerated, etc.) when a property (e.g., observable property such as color) of the material is not usable or desirable to be incorporated into a product.

