The core of making a flip-flop hasn’t changed much in the past few decades. The materials and design have been updated, but flip-flops are still for the most part made in the exact same way as they have been for a long time. Rightfully so, since the flip-flop is pretty much the most basic type of footwear in existence!

Flip-flops were one of the first types of footwear that innovators began experimenting with, flip-flops made from recycled automobile tires, flip-flops made from old carpet, and now flip-flops made from repurposed yoga mats!

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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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We are excited to be working on our first US based initiative with the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribe in Cape Cod, Massachusetts! It all began when Rao and I thought it would be cool to expand our product offer to closed-toe footwear as well. Moccasins came to mind and we set out on a journey to find a source. Turns out that real moccasins are not only expensive ($100+ because they are handmade from premium leather) but not really all that practical for everyday use by most people. The thin leather sole provides little cushioning, and in our asphalt covered world – they wear out fast. Several consumer brands such as Minnetonka and LL Bean have built expansive product lines of modernized moccasins with shoe like soles which you can get pretty much anywhere these days.

During the process of learning about the American Indian, and traditional American Indian footwear we got quite the history lesson (a nice side benefit of working at Common Soles!). It turns out the local tribe to us here in Massachusetts has a long and proud heritage of working with Quahog shells and crafting them into beautiful pieces of jewelry (I wrote about this on Nov 4th). We met several times with members from the tribe and together came up with the idea of crafting shells into pieces of artwork that can be attached to the top strap of a flip-flop. Not only does the net product look good, but as our friends who have been test wearing them let us know “they are also great conversation starters”. Right on!

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Yesterday, Rao and I spent the day visiting with several members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribe on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.  Our goal was two fold: 1)to discover handcrafted footwear related items which we could bring into the Common Soles catalog  2)to learn about the community and what potential initiatives could be funded by the sale of said products via Common Soles.

Our journey was both educational and successful! We met with a kind women who handcrafts jewelery from Quahog shells found along the shores of Cape Cod. She produces amazing and beautiful pieces of jewelery from these shells.  Critical for her is not using any glues, cements, or other non-natural elements in the fabrication of the items. Only natural materials such as silver, leather or sinew.  Below is an exceptional pair of earrings we saw fashioned from quahog shells. Quahog's are an edible clam of the Atlantic coast of North America which boast a hard, rounded shell. The coloring of the quahog varies but the most common have a deep purple marbling effect on the base white shell.  

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We are making great progress with raising the necessary funds for our Vijayawada school book initiative.  25% to goal thus far! Thank you to all who are supporting this initiative by purchasing a pair of the Saahi Flip-flops.  The sooner we reach our goal, the faster the children get their new books.

We're looking at additional initiaitves with our friends in Vijayawada, India as well as other locations in India.  Outside of India we are searching for and evaluating potential factories and footwear manufacturing communities in such places as Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, and even North America.

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