I just got back from a two week trip to New Zealand. What an incredible country. The best way for me to describe it is: "Lake Tahoe meets Hawaii". It’s that amazing of a place. We toured the South Island and drew a TON of inspiration from the Kiwi culture as well as spoke with dozens of folks who live in flops year round.
During that same time Rao has been focusing efforts on the south-west market of the US. Specifically Texas. We will have a lot more on that effort shortly.
I always wanted to be a socially responsible entrepreneur and giving back to the community was a big part of it. That was the theme that got Dave and I together in this venture. The journey in this direction has opened a whole new perspective for us on conscious capitalism and environmental responsibility. We can’t help but notice and try emulating other businesses and initiatives in this direction. Here are links to some earlier blogs from Dave on some of the businesses we admire
EVA, (Ethylene-vinyl acetate) is some incredibly versatile stuff. It’s the elasticized polymer foam material used in most footwear to add support, structure, and cushioning. It’s incredibly versatile as it can be molded, dyed, cut, and shaped into just about any configuration. It’s incredibly inexpensive compared to the other materials used in footwear such as leather or rubber, and it’s darn easy to get good at working with it!
But it’s not all roses for this wonder material. EVA doesn’t break-down naturally and so it’s filling landfills across the globe with a product that doesn’t jive with nature. The manufacturing of EVA is a toxic process, and even though EVA scraps and used EVA can be recycled into new EVA – it’s not at all a green process.
Rao and Hema just got back from a trip to Goa where they put a few of our latest designs to the test! Goa is located on the west coast of India in a region known as Konkan. Known for its beautiful beaches and comfortable climate, Goa pulls visitors from all over the world as a resort destination. Perfect for testing out Common Soles flip-flops!
With Rao in India and not here to supervise me on a daily basis, things get a little crazy here at Common Soles HQ. So I declare that we should all listen to more music during the day! Good music certainly motivates me. What motivates you?
Here are some recent favorites for you to get things going for yourself:
2010 is already shaping up to be a good year for us! Earlier this month we realized the successful completion of our first initiative. The goal was to generate funding to purchase new school books and supplies for the children of the workers in the factory that make Common Soles flip-flops in Vijayawada, India. Check out the details and photos from this event on our initiatives page.
Creating Community Through Food - right on Bi-Rite! We spotted this while in San Francisco. Bi-Rite is an institution in the city and I sure have eaten my fair share of ice-cream from them! While enjoying my latest cone in the corner of the busy shop I flipped through the Bi-Rite brochure. On the back page was one of the best statements of how an organization views it's business ecosystem. Here it is, enjoy!
Common Soles is an act of entrepreneurialism. We identified an opportunity and assembled needed resources to get this venture up and going. For us, that was the easy part. The hard part is now sustaining the venture! In our journey to build the organization we have come across and met up with several other entrepreneurs, as well as taken calls and meetings with budding entrepreneurs all over. Often the topic is “how did you get started?”, or “what are the basic tools I need to get this thing up and going?” What has come out of all these interactions is what I’m calling the Entrepreneur’s Tool Box, or basically the tools that are nice to have at hand to anyone starting a business, regardless of industry or type.
Note: I recently saw an interesting slide show that Inc. did on this topic. It’s worth checking out as well.
So as many of you know, Rao is in India right now working on new product. He’s come up with some really cool ideas and found some interesting new materials for us to work with. (Not bad for a recovering IT manager!!) I covered some of the new eco-friendly materials we are looking to use in previous posts, but wanted to share this latest item with you.
Those of you who have been with us since the beginning (spring ‘09) know that we’ve been building Common Soles in real time and in an open and public manner. We’ve solicited you via Twitter, Facebook, this blog, email, grabbing random people on the sidewalk, etc. to garner feedback on everything from colors for our website, to the placement of the arch support in our flip-flops. We appreciate the time and effort you have given us and the candid (very in some cases) responses you shared. So thank you!
Common Soles is a brand for you. Our tag line after all is Common Soles for the Common Good. Or is it… Many of you have said you preferred our new one: Look Good + Do Good more so. Either way, we’re building this organization in real time, with you, our fans and customers involved in the dialogue at every step of the way.
Happy 2010!
So much to look forward to, and so much to look back at! My cousin in Israel takes incredible photos – here’s his first of 2010. Taken at Palmachim Beach, about 20km south of Tel-Aviv. We can't wait to share all we've been up to (and still going to do) here on our blog, Facebook page, and Twitter. So stay tuned and enjoy all the beautiful places.
As Dave mentioned in the previous blog our quest for natural materials continues not only in India but from else where in the world. In parallel we are also working on our next designs that can use the latest technology available. We had success with laser engraving on the Men's Aiman style flip-flop and are now looking to utilize laser engraving in new ways.
Laser engraving is the practice of using lasers to engrave or mark an object, in this case our insoles. The technique can be very technical and complex, and uses a computer system to drive the movements of the laser head. In spite of this complex process, very precise and clean engravings can be achieved.
Rao and I are literally scouring the earth seeking eco-friendly and sustainable materials to use in constructing Common Soles footwear. We’ve come across all sorts of incredible product as well as some down-right scary stuff. We’re finding materials both here in Massachusetts as well as across the ocean. Building on our Oct 22nd blog post on Making Eco-Friendly Flip-Flops here is an update on some of the materials and construction techniques we hope to be working into our line moving forward. This post is also essentially Part 3 of a series I am writing on sustainable footwear here on our blog. Enjoy!
Rice Rubber Outsole: This stuff is amazing. The outsole is the very bottom of footwear, the part that connects with the ground. Most traditional outsoles are made from rubber or PU (polyurethane). Rice Rubber is a blend of several happier ingredients. It’s a base of natural latex rubber mixed with SBR or Styrene Butadiene Rubber. SBR has been used for over 60 years in all sorts of applications such as tires, shoes, and gaskets. The blend is necessary for durability and longevity (Remember – durable footwear has a longer useful life = fewer pairs need to be manufactured). Rice husks which are a byproduct of the food industry and typically discarded after harvesting are then mixed in with the rubber. The rice husks displace a good portion of the rubber needed as well as add strength to the mixture. Similar to how gravel is added to cement to form concrete. The resulting product is not only a more eco-friendly alternative to traditional rubber soles, but it looks darn cool!
We’ve sparked a bit of dialogue from our last post on our Top 10 Favorite Social Ventures. Since that time we’ve discovered or have been introduced to several new ventures worth sharing. What gets us so excited about discovering these ventures isn’t just that they necessarily make a cool product or offer a new service. It’s that they do it all within a socially conscious context. That’s what’s so energizing about social ventures. They are businesses that seek profit, but do so by considering and improving on the impact of that profit making process. So here they are, again in no particular order.
ONNO www.onnotextiles.com
T shirts made from sustainable fibers such as Bamboo, Hemp, and Organic Cotton. Boulder, CO
Rao is back in India working on product and initiatives. We hope to have our first initiative fully funded in the next few weeks while he’s over there so we can wrap it up and get the kids new books! He’s busy working with the folks over there in assembling that whole process and I hope having some fun while doing so!
Our Saahi and Natya flip-flops come delivered to you in a colorful organza bag. Organza is a shear fabric traditionally made from silk. We have ours made from synthetic filaments in the same factory that makes our flops during any down time they may have.
So other than being a handy carry bag for a pair of Common Soles we’ve discovered several other fun and practical uses for these drawstring marvels of storage!
We’re working hard on designing and manufacturing our footwear to be as sustainable as possible. What is sustainable in footwear though?? Sustainable footwear considers: raw materials, product design, manufacturing processes, end-of-useful-life policy, and a whole slew of other components. So many in fact that the only way a company can truly produce a pair of sustainably made footwear is to tackle one element of the process of achieving total sustainability at a time. We at Common Soles are currently focusing our efforts on materials and manufacturing processes right now. That is not to say we aren’t doing all we can elsewhere in the sustainability value chain – this is just our area of focus at the moment.
I wrote a bit about materials on October 22nd of this year. This post is on process. The big one we can influence as a band in the US making footwear overseas is how our factory sources materials. Sourcing is a blend of art and science and is a constant battle of quality versus cost. Being who we are (a social venture) we lean toward quality whenever we have a choice. The difficulty we run into often times is that we are quite small in the world of footwear manufacturing and thus often have little say. Not an excuse though…
Today we posted our new flops for men and women – hooray! The Natya (womens) and Aiman (mens). Check them out! Along with the new flops comes a new initiative. This time it’s fixing up the library and laboratory at the all girls school Rao and I visited in Purchuru. We are able to give 5% or $1.25 from every pair sold of these new styles to help fund this initiative. Common Soles also covers the administration of this initiative which includes managing the repairs and purchasing the new lab equipment and books.
On August 25th I wrote about the 4% we allocate per pair of Saahi flip-flops sold. So here’s the continuation of the dialogue on the % per pair allocated. What it all boils down to: as we grow as a business we get better at making footwear. This means we have a little bit more margin so we can now offer another percentage point to help fund the cause. This is good!
When sorting and packing my ski equipment this morning I didn’t think twice about tossing in a pair of Common Soles flip-flops. I always travel with a pair of flip-flops, no matter where I go. Beach, mountains, business trip, or grandma’s house; like my tooth-brush and a pair of board-shorts, a good pair of flip-flops always accompanies me.
I started carrying flops with me everywhere I traveled about 7 years ago. It was during my days in business consulting that I discovered the value of slipping into a comfy pair of flops after a long day of stiff dress shoes. The toe-freeing liberation of my feet set a whole new tone for my body once the suit came off and the flops and jeans went on. I would stroll out of my hotel room and for a jount to the local taqueria for a casual dinner, or grab a paper to read in the lobby. There was something magical about wearing flops that made me feel relaxed and refreshed.