Fluoro's bio-organic, surf shack-inspired factory for R.A.D performance footwear

What do CrossFit and rave culture have in common? Perhaps more than you'd think. Communion with your tribe, physical exertion, endorphins and apparel that fuses style, comfort and performance.

As burgeoning footwear brand R.A.D sees it, they're singing from the same hymn sheet. The company has built a large and devoted fan base in partnership with London creative agency Fluoro over the last three years, with a lo-fi, retro-futuristic aesthetic informed by '90s dance culture and the skate and surf lifestyle. R.A.D stands for 'Rally Against Destruction' of the mind, body and planet.

The original R.A.D ONE shoe proved to have broad appeal from the gym to the street through its form, functionality, and distinctive, techno-organic brand world. The company now stands toe-to-toe with the biggest footwear brands in the world on its own terms. For the launch of R.A.D ONE V2, they needed a campaign that would retire a world-leading performance shoe and create excitement around the drop of the new, innovative design.

Fluoro worked into the 'R.A.D Delivery Systems' concept, speaking to the key moment of an online purchase—its arrival in real life—and feeding into the drop culture that the brand is built on. Fluoro used the concept as a metaphor for 'delivering the future of innovation' and created a fantastical 3D realm where the shoe is engineered—a sort of bio-organic surf shack-meets-Willy Wonka-meets-nineties rave.

"We've been inspired by the idea of solarpunk instead of cyberpunk," says Fluoro founder and R.A.D creative director Tim Smith. "It's basically the idea that in order to progress and innovate, we need to envision a world that operates using the earth's natural resources rather than 'man-made' solutions. So we drew on this, along with skate and surf culture, gaming and nostalgia from our youth, and built it into the concept of 'Surreal Worlds' – a sort of ethereal, solarpunk laboratory in the sky."

The external shape of the Lab Shack takes inspiration from 'Spaceship' architecture but with more solarpunk rustic elements inspired by nomadic settlements. Capsules are dispatched into the archive (R.A.D ONE has only been released as limited editions, which are never reissued), and the R.A.D ONE V2 is revealed – its construction built in layers. The new design heroes the original colourway of Off White + Sunny Lime, giving fans a chance to own these in a new incarnation. The shoes are seen turning in space above the sea against a pastel sky to a muffled psychedelic rock soundtrack being played as if on a radio in the background.

Fluoro is known for shunning overproduction in favour of stylised lo-fi creativity, which people hunger for in today's tide of shiny high-spec media. The ship that dispatches the trainers nods to the cult 1980s film Flight of the Navigator, one of the first Hollywood movies to extensively use CGI. Retro references from Y2K and earlier combine with future-facing design to create a look and feel uniquely R.A.D.

Beyond the digital campaign content, Fluoro delivered a comprehensive graphic toolkit to cement the wide world of assets and executions together. R.A.D® Delivery Systems presents a rich shopping experience for a brand with no permanent physical outlets, but that lives online and in real-world activations.

R.A.D's guerilla-style US launch tour saw original Ford F59 delivery step vans, caked in bespoke R.A.D ONE V2 stickers Fluoro have created, showing up at specified locations and selling shoes and merch out of the back. The campaign video shows athletes decked out in bespoke Delivery Systems apparel using the Fluoro graphic identity, filmed on doorbell cameras, emptying the vans, garden hopping, running, skateboarding and delivering R.A.D ONE V2 trainers to peoples' doors.

"We like the idea of being creative and imaginative and bringing a sort of unreality together with the real-life activations," says Smith. "Understanding that both things can be separate, but all hold together. And with the digital content, there's no point just making it literal – it's about making innovation and performance exciting, thought-provoking and creative."

This campaign drove a highly successful launch. R.A.D ONE was a massive hit, but with R.A.D ONE V2, more shoes were sold in the first ten minutes than in the company's previous biggest-ever 24 hours.

R.A.D founder and former British CrossFit athlete Benjamin Massey says: "Since the brand's inception, Fluoro has helped R.A.D build a devoted community from serious athletes to style-driven brand fans. The agency devised our distinctive retro-futuristic aesthetic within a sharp design discipline, which we can activate wherever our community meets us."

Smith says: "Rather than producing content to fit target audiences, we wanted to use the authentic perspectives of our own team and the teams we work with.

"We drew from Fluoro and R.A.D founder Ben's immersion in the cultural movements that defined our youth, situating R.A.D among the extreme sports subcultures that first bridged the divides between fashion, fitness and creative expression at the turn of the 1990s."

He notes that they also tapped into their own interests and shared cultural references to fashion in a hyperreal world. The team feels that this brings innovation, energy and excitement to the drop in a way that content coldly created for 'audiences' could never do.