The 210 Footwear Foundation is all about "shoepeople helping shoepeople". We're down with that! Nice letter from 210 President Peggy Meill.

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For those of you heading to Newport, RI this summer please be sure to stop by and see us at Potter & Co at 172 Thames Street.  Potter & Co. has been offering casual, lifestyle, and functional clothing and accessories for over 100 years to both the locals and tourists of beautiful Newport. Lucky for us, Chafee Emory, Potter & Co's new proprietor (and ripping sailor) took a fancy to our story (and product) and as of today you can get your soles from her as well!

 

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We've been getting the question of what we do with our seconds from many of you so I figured I'd write up a few quick words on the afterlife of a second quality Common Soles flip-flop.

Any seconds, or flip-flops which are made in our factory and don't pass our quality tests are either: 1) disassembled and re-made into new flips, 2) given to whomever is standing there at the moment who may want them..., or 3) donated to Soles 4 Souls (only if they are deemed wearable, with minor cosmetic flaws only) . 

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The Fair Labor Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending sweatshop conditions. We fully support this cause and organization. Being a supporter is one thing, truly understanding he benchmarks they have outlined that constitute good working conditions is slightly more complex. The FLA has assembled a 28 page document that outlines the benchmarks used to determine if a factory is providing good working conditions for their employees. Here’s a link to that .pdf 

These benchmarks cover all the basic elements such as wages, child labor restrictions, sanitary conditions, etc. What they do not cover are environmental practices in operations. We have discussed our efforts in that area in previous blog posts and will have even more on that topic in the future as it is a concern we also strongly believe in.

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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.

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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.

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Since we first came up with the concept of Common Soles earlier this year we've been chugging along quite quickly and smoothly. Fueled by passion we were able to come to market with our first flip-flop more rapidly than what others thought possible. Now we are a few weeks away from having our next few styles available which will go to funding new initiatives. Thus, we've proven our model is scalable which is a critical step in building Common Soles as a brand, and as a business. Without the business aspect the social aspect doesn't get the necessary funding and the whole model doesn't work. So happily it is all working out great thus far!

Rao and I are busy working on the new products and initiatives, but to the above point we are just as busy working on building a stable platform for Common Soles. Necessary components of that platform include such functions as: Distribution, Marketing, Accounting, and Finance. The two big ones for us at the moment being Marketing and Finance.  Without people knowing about what we are doing nobody can become a supporter or purchase a pair of flip-flops from us, and without the necessary finance, we won't have enough capital to invest in growing the organization.  This is our challenge - our solution? Communication.

Last Friday Rao and I pitched Common Soles at Babson (I know, we mention Babson quite frequently). We participated in Rocket Pitch which is a really cool event where presenters are given 3 minutes to present 3 slides to an audience comprised of business school students, attorneys, CPAs, investors, and other interested folks, a business or product idea in hopes that some of the attendees can and decide to provide value to the presenter in the form of investment, connections, advice, etc. It's an incredible experience and we got A LOT of positive reaction from our audience.

So this is us communicating. Reaching out to the world and asking how we can be the organization we have planned on building. It takes time, it takes a plan, and it takes help.  Thanks all for everything you've given us thus far.

-Dave

We are probably one of the smallest footwear organizations in existence right now.  Two employees in the US, and some dedicated folks overseas.  Of course we do have the help of our significant others (thank you very much!), friends, and family.  Being small is good though - we are incredibly nimble and it's very easy for Rao and I to communicate with one another. 

 

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