A social manufacturing (SM) system for the footwear industry is proposed to improve customisation accuracy and efficiency through the use of big data and crowdsourcing. SM is a novel manufacturing paradigm for distributed, collaborative, service-oriented, crowdsourcing-based, intelligent, and customised footwear production. First, the definition and process of footwear SM are introduced. Next, key supporting technologies are discussed, including 3D scanning, an evaluation mechanism for supply-demand matching, and optimised allocation of socialised manufacturing resources. Finally, the system development and an application case are described. In SM, a prosumer is defined as someone who is both a producer and consumer at the same time, and can be involved in the full life cycle of a personalised product, including the design, manufacture, service, and consumption processes. This allows the experience of every prosumer to be enhanced through participation, potential demands for personalised product to be released, and the production efficiency of customisation to be improved.