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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Last Friday Rao and I attended a workshop led by Dr. Ralph Z. Sorenson on the topic of Conscious Capitalism. Ralph is an uber accomplished businessman with professorships at Babson, Univ. of Colorado and Harvard Business School under his belt, as well as working for several multinationals, serving as President of Babson College, managing a private investment firm, and a board member on over 30 boards both public and private. One board he currently sits on is that of Whole Foods.

So as you can imagine, Whole foods was a focal point of discussion for the day. Whole Foods is really an amazing organization, I always knew the company stood for good business, and that CEO and Founder John Mackey was a good guy, I just didn’t ever analyze the company the way you can when a discussion is being led by a long time board member of the company!

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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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Some folks have been kind enough to tell us that they really like out company name and logo. Common Soles.  Well, thanks!  We like it as well.  It's the play on the word "sole" that means the most. The "sole"-"soul" thing is more about getting excited about your passions than anything else.  I've heard a lot lately about how things no longer have soul.  "Music these days has no soul" or "Skiers have lost all soul in the sport".  That's ridiculous.  As long as you're putting in 100% and loving what you're doing then whatever it is has soul!  Soul is about sharing excitement and passion. When passion is infused in an act then that act has got soul.

This is where the "soles-souls" part of Common Soles comes in.  We're passionate about effecting change in the footwear industry.  We're passionate about providing our fans with quality product, and we're passionate about the people we surround ourselves with on this incredible planet.  

It's sole time!
-Dave

I am enroute to India to meet up with Rao who has been hard at work over there on new product and initiaitves for Common Soles.  As a result we won't be posting any new blog entries until we return the week of Oct 11th. (I know, you'll miss us...)

The purpose of the trip is to get the next few styles and initiaitves dialed in. A women's flip-flop similar to the picture here, and a men's flop!  Each flop will be sold to generate funding to support an initiaitve relevant to the workers that made the flops. Most likely these initiatives will be education related.  The plan is to have these new styles available later this fall!  Wish us luck and please bear with us these next two weeks as Lisa is running the show here in the US by herself until Oct 11th.

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