Starting a footwear brand has always been a challenging endeavour. It is a very competitive market that requires a great level of research and can demand high investment amounts. In recent times, such a venture has become even more complex as consumers are paying more attention to sustainable and eco-friendly brands.
Probably, given today's concerns with our environment, it's correct to assume that the chances of succeeding are much lower if you don't address these concerns since the very inception.
So, what approaches can you use to build sustainable products if you plan to start a footwear brand today?
Before I start sharing details on how to build products in a sustainable way, I would like to stress how important it is to invest in market research and create a proper product strategy. Poor understanding of who is your consumer and your competitors drives the creation of wrong products and extensive collections with low adoption rates. You would be surprised how many companies still fail in managing product strategy.
At first, it may not seem related to sustainability. But if you consider the many hours of work, energy, prototypes, materials, and samples that are disposed of, season after season, due to the low efficiency of shoe collections, you will realise the inappropriate use of resources, and the worse part is that it generates trash.
So, to the products:
There are a couple of ways to design shoes that help the environment. Below is a short description of the ones the industry is already offering:
1. Use of EPMs
This is the method most applied today, by far. It requires the product to have a percentage of Environmental Preferred Materials or EPM by weight in a shoe composition.
That means the materials you choose for the upper, linings, foams, outsole, reinforcements, and laces all must follow requirements that help save the planet's resources, either with partially recycled content or responsibly sourced from nature. Today if you ask your core suppliers, you will find almost all types of materials have their sustainable version.
The point still missing with this approach is the shoes' End of Life (EOL). What happens if you don't want the shoe anymore or the outsoles are broken?
90% of the time, it ends up in a landfill, and that's not a good thing.
To ensure you're selecting EPMs, you need to know the sources and the percentage of recycled or bio-based materials. Below are the groups that can help you get critical information, especially if you want your products certified.
- Leather: The Leather Working Group is a not-for-profit organisation responsible for the world's leading environmental certification for the leather manufacturing industry. LWG has over 1300 members, including brands and retailers, tanneries, traders, chemical suppliers and garments, footwear, and furniture manufacturers. It was created in 2005 by brands such as Adidas, Clarks, Ikea, Nike, Marks & Spencer, New Balance, Timberland, and key leather manufacturing companies from across the globe that came together to focus on sustainability within the leather industry.
- Fabrics: Founded as Organic Exchange in 2002, Textile Exchange is a global non-profit organisation that works closely with all sectors of the textile supply chain. Textile Exchange identifies and shares best practices regarding farming, materials, processing, traceability, and product end-of-life to create positive impacts on water, soil, air, animals, and the human population. Textile Exchange expanded from a focus solely on organic cotton in 2010 to include a diverse preferred fibre and materials portfolio covering:
- Recycled content: The Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) and Global Recycled Standard (GRS) are international, voluntary standards that set requirements for third-party certification of recycled input and chain of custody. The shared goal of the standards is to increase the use of recycled materials. The GRS includes additional social and environmental processing requirements and chemical restrictions criteria. Standards via Textile Exchange.
- Wool: The Responsible Wool Standard is an independent, voluntary standard. On farms, the certification ensures that sheep are treated with respect to their Five Freedoms and ensures best practices in the management and protection of the land. In addition, certification ensures that wool from certified farms is correctly identified and tracked through the processing stages.
- Natural: The Organic Content Standard (OCS) is an international, voluntary standard that sets requirements for third-party certification of certified organic input and chain of custody. The goal of the OCS is to increase organic agriculture production.
Another great source of information is the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America (FDRA) 's Footwear EPM Guide. It brings materials to use and the minimum percentages needed to certify your product to the US market.
2. Durable
It's a concept that most consumers recognise as necessary, even if unconsciously. I believe most of us know that things that wear out too fast aren't good for the planet.
To build a shoe matching this approach, you still should use EPMs, but you must select high-performance/durable materials and design the shoes to be easily repaired.
Probably, it's the kind of product you would find in second-hand stores or rental platforms, as they can survive the proof of the time.
It still doesn't solve the EOL issue, but it tends to delay the final disposal.
Another issue with durable products is that sometimes it's too difficult to get them fixed.
There is one brand trying to change that. At least to my knowledge,
VYN is the only brand that has the Right to Repair as a central aspect of the design of its products.
Their sneakers are designed and re-engineered so that the most vulnerable parts of sneakers can be exchanged by yourself.
3. Recyclable shoes
To facilitate the recycling process, the shoe needs to be built and designed to be mono-material so that it can be shredded and reused. Mainly a solution for plastics.
It sounded a bit complex at first, at least for me.
But when Adidas launched the Made To Be Remade in 2021, the idea started to make more sense.
The shoe is all made of variations of TPU, a pretty versatile plastic that can have excellent technical performance.
So this is the approach Adidas proposed with this concept: when you get tired of wearing your sneakers, you can send them back to Adidas. They will then grind it out to use the raw plastic to start a new product. This way no new plastics need to enter the system.
The applications can be huge, but there are challenges too.
The main challenge is to make sure consumers will return the shoes and the cost of this reverse logistics. I believe that's why Adidas is adding new patterns little by little.
4. Biodegradable Shoes
It's quite a new concept, primarily because the technology in terms of materials is in the early stages of development. Still, there are brands out there already launching products that can biodegrade within a couple of months.
It closes the loop, which is good. But, I'm just not sure if we won't have people thinking they can throw shoes anywhere as they do with plastic bottles, and in the end, we won't be changing this terrible behaviour of human beings.
To claim that a shoe is biodegradable, all components of the sneakers must biodegrade under aerobic composting conditions (ASTM D5338) — which means they will completely break down when exposed to air, moisture, and micro-organisms in compost.
As you can expect, outsoles are the main challenging components if you choose this path.
Below are two examples:
- One is the famous Italian brand Golden Goose which launched a sneaker made with a rubber outsole.
- The other one is a new brand called Blueview footwear, built with biodegradability as its main story.
5. Circular
Shoes that are built to be dis-assembled without or with the minimum presence of glue. These shoes' materials can be easily separated and directed to recycling facilities. Perhaps the most challenging approach as it needs to be designed for it.
Two leading brands launched shoes with this approach recently: Nike and Timberland.
Last April, Nike announced the launch of the ISPA Link and Link Axis sneakers. The first ones Made To Be Taken Apart.
Both sneakers have pieces connected without glue or cement, like a Lego. So they can be completely disassembled.
With these design solutions, the whole production assembly process runs much faster and cleaner, eliminating heat and cooling tunnels, and the best part is that there is no glue application.
Timberland also focused on circularity with their just-launched Trekker City Hiker, part of the Timberloop programme.
Known for its durability and use of leather and other high-performance materials, the brand went back to the drawing board to design shoes that are made to be taken apart and each part recycled into a new product — closing the loop from a worn product to a new product.
This new line has a unique sole construction where with a cut of one seam, the outsoles can be taken off, and each part is ultimately put into its special recycling stream.
With this new construction method, it's possible almost to eliminate the use of chemical-based cement, a difficulty faced by other types of footwear constructions.
As you can see, the possibilities are pretty vast. So, study the different options carefully, combine them with your fine-tuned product strategy, and you're ready to go.
One reminder: As a new brand, you will need to help educate the consumer so that they understand better why you have chosen this or that approach to sustainability.
And the last piece of advice: give priority to materials that are widely available in your area so that you can source them locally, avoiding huge environmental impact with transportation.
Good luck!
