Outdoor footwear, apparel and accessories firm The Timberland Company has been awarded a 2006 Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) for the new Timberland PreciseFit system, which will be launched in the autumn.

Research involving 4,000 subjects undertaken by Timberland's Invention Factory revealed that the greatest dimensional differences exist in the volume of the forefoot, making it the primary driver of proper fit. Traditional fit paradigms focus on length and width rather than volume, often leading to badly fitting shoes.

This new fit system allows consumers to customise their fit through a system of forefoot inserts. Each pair of shoes comes with a set of inserts of varying thicknesses that lock on to a removable footbed, creating optimal volume in each shoe and allowing for differences between left and right feet.