Stepping Towards Sustainability
Veja is a wildly popular shoe, and you’re guaranteed to have seen it on the average passer. But do you know its sustainable roots?
Sneaker brand Veja launched in 2005 by two men with a mission to bring sustainability into the sneaker industry. Veja, or “look” in Portuguese, embodies the ethos of the Veja brand: looking beyond sneakers and understanding how they are made.
Founders and best friends Sebastian Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion started their careers in investment banking but were immediately discouraged by the disconnect they saw between corporate talk about sustainability and what these companies were actually doing in the field. The duo quit their jobs and formed an NGO, studying everything from the efficacy of solar panels to the spread of HIV among South African miners.
Kopp and Ghislain started buying wild rubber from rubber tappers in the Amazon even though it costs more than synthetic materials. The business partners also decided to use ecological cotton that’s grown in a way that enriches the soil rather than damaging it with chemicals. By sourcing these materials responsibly, they reduce their environmental impact. Veja prioritizes fair trade practices, ensuring that workers along their supply chain are paid fair wages and operate in safe working conditions. This commitment to ethical labor practices helps support local communities and promotes social sustainability. With a sustainable footprint and genuine fair trade practices, Veja is a company that leads by example.
The company continually seeks innovative ways to improve the sustainability of its products. Their most striking move was to invent the waterproof “bottle mesh” used to make the upper part of some of their sneaker models. It takes three recycled plastic bottles to make one pair of shoes, according to the company. The bottles are collected from the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo and then sent to a factory where they’re crushed into flakes and transformed into fiber.
To keep up with their authentic approach, Veja uses no advertising. By eliminating advertising, Veja reallocates the resources that would typically go into marketing toward ensuring the well-being of the people producing our sneakers in the fields and factories. As they state on their website, “Eliminating ads, marketing costs, doing away with brand ambassadors, billboards, means investing in reality rather than fiction. It means working back up the production chain and changing it. It means spending more time on the ground, rather than investing in smoke and mirrors.”
Today, Veja supplies its shoes to 1,800 retailers in 45 countries according to a CNN article. Veja says it sold 550,000 pairs last year, generating $21 million in revenue. Despite the higher price point of the sneaker (retailing at upwards of $150), Veja is buying into quality and sustainability. Many wearers of the shoes report them lasting anywhere from 1-3 years and throughout that time, the shoes provide solid comfort and style.
Will you be ditching the checks and stripes for a V in your next purchase? Let us know @theedgemag.