Hello! If you are looking to buy sneakers from a brand that has a strong focus on transparency, fair trade and social and environmental responsibility, you should definitely check Veja.
Veja is a French company established since 2003 and always committed to fair trading sourcing and the use of organic materials. Their journey began when the founders got in contact with another French company which was making coffee and chocolate etc working directly with producers and farmers around the world and that was an eye opener to come to realization that they could also make an innovative consumers product which would have made a positive impact on the economy.
The founders of Veja decided to focus their effort into producing sneakers and this choice is originated by results of a research showing that for this specific product traditionally in the industry 70% of cost was spent on advertising and only 30% allocated to manufacturing. These guys though it would have been smarter to cut the ads costs and put a lot more money into the manufacturing process, yet being able to keep the same retail price basically paving the way to producing goods with respect to the environment and to the people involved in the making process.
How they did it? They flew to Brazil and started working with the Seringueiros, a community living in the Amazon rain forest that operates in harmony with the surrounding environment and then they established collaboration with organic cotton producers not using fertilizers and pesticides.
As a results, natural rubber from trees and organic cotton are key materials used to produce these sneakers and long story short these are then manufactured in a factory still in Brazil and then assembled and packaged back in France, in the outskirts of Paris.
Nowadays, Veja, which by the way stands for “look” in Portuguese, produces sneakers with a new developed fabrics entirely made from recycled plastic bottles and they sell in many countries worldwide with serious commitment to keep improving in what they do.
Hope you get inspiration for your next purchase, if you like my post please follow me on Facebook or Instagram by clicking on the icons below, thanks so much!
Leave a Reply