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From the anvil of hope to sole-sinking despair to cobbling up a footwear brand, perhaps the only to be manufactured by jailbirds in a prison, Inmate, with the tagline ‘Bringing Humanity to Leather’, is a story that now braids success. A first person account from the Founder.

Planning to launch a footwear brand? How can you ensure a sustainable range of footwear? How could you go about sourcing the right environment-friendly raw materials? What approaches can you use to build sustainable products if you plan to start a footwear brand today? Answers to all these questions and more…

Among the top ten foreign exchange earners for the country, the Indian leather, leather products and footwear industry has been identified as one among the 12 Focus Sectors by the Indian government to help the country emerge as a global supplier by tapping into its inherent strengths. However, leather players, mostly small or medium scale enterprises, continue to be besieged by a host of issues. A SWOT analysis.

As cotton costs touch historic highs, there seems to be no solution as the supply-demand imbalance is playing the pricing dynamics. But with India being one of the top-most cotton producing and cotton textile exporting countries, the government needs to take a serious view and seek a long-term solution.

Sustainability in luxury, earlier an oxymoron, has gone mainstream as secondhand turns out to be one among the many solutions to check environmental damage caused by its extravagance.

The bane of the apparel industry is its highly fragmented and disjointed supply chain. There is an urgent need to integrate the entire supply chain to make it agile, responsive, robust and efficient. Is it doable?

If we listen to the advertising messages by brands and retailers, we could easily be led to believe that most of the products sold today are “green". Sadly, this is far from the truth. And though many efforts are being made, greenwashing still reigns.

The seams they are a’changing! With an addressable market of consumer opportunity of about 100 billion dollars in India up for grabs, the time to launch your D2C brand is now; so what if established physical players are also assuming the D2C avatar which is changing the game rapidly.

It is worth every tannery and trade association buying into ESG to push for doing things correctly at every level. One big area for leather is its longevity and production and design should have this in mind and plan for repair, refurbishment and possible repurposing.

Green logos are not enough to effect environmental challenges and brand narratives that fail to incorporate human degradations leave behind vast numbers of our planet’s people and, thereby, fail to address the ‘social’ in ESG or environmental, social and governance elements.