Allbirds is a line of sustainable footwear originally founded in 2014 by New Zealander Tim Brown, a football player and shoemaker. It became a company in March 2016 with Co-CEO Joey Zwillinger as biotech engineer and renewable materials expert. It was initially financed through a research grant from the New Zealand wool industry to design a sneaker and a Kickstarter campaign which raised $120,000 in the first 3 days. The name Allbirds came from the fact that New Zealand has very few mammals, it is mostly-all birds. It is a New Zealand/US company, San Francisco-based, with a direct-to-consumer model, selling through their website, stores, and Facebook ads. Millions of dollars since have been invested privately to be able to grow and innovate materials. The company went public late last year.
Zwillinger talks of the team dynamic and open plan office space where he sits across the room from his Co-CEO Tim Brown. Brown wanted to make a comfortable sneaker using wool (he knew shoes) and Zwillinger wanted to change the materials used to be renewable, using tree fibers, sugarcane and castor bean oil, recycled nylon, and water bottles for their shoelaces. Their shoe soles are open-source from a sugarcane-based carbon-negative material called SweetFoam®. They openly help other companies who inquire about using this material because the bigger picture of sustainability is what they care about.
Amazon started producing a similar shoe called Galen, Zwillinger wrote to Jeff Bezos suggesting that “if you are going to use your dominant market power to rip us off, you can at least do something good for the planet,” please use SweetFoam® in your shoe.
Zwillinger says they won’t take shortcuts on anything from quality to sustainability, this I believe is their driving mission. On their website products are on one side and sustainability on the other. Their initiatives include reversing climate change, how we operate, carbon footprint, regenerative agriculture, renewable materials, carbon offsets, and responsible energy. They include some background information called reality, beginnings, approach and priorities to reduce beyond carbon neutrality with regenerative agriculture, renewable materials and responsible energy, progress, they became carbon neutral April 2019, introduced carbon footprint labeling April 2020, plant-based leather Feb 2021 and under commitments shows Allbirds carbon footprint and plans for the future.
Today they have an SPO framework that makes them accountable to the planet. They are a public benefit corporation, with B Corp certification. They use TENCEL Lyocell sourced from wood in Africa which does not use irrigation or fertilizers, from forests with an FSC® Certification. Their SweetFoam® is sourced from sugarcane from Brazil using only rainwater for irrigation, reducing atmospheric carbon while growing. Proforest and Brasken developed standards to protect the people and the environment where they grow. Allbirds goes further to say, “Truly realizing a responsible energy future will require change on a global scale through policy changes, so we plan to advocate for progress on this level, too.”
Their website is very explicate showing where each item is manufactured, where materials are sourced, processed, going into details about future goals. Although it has recently been updated, there does not seem to be all the information previously listed. I checked their instagram, they are posting the people who are liking their products, I wish there was more about their sustainability ideas, a mixture of more than just shoes as I didn't buy the shoes because of the shoes but because of their materials and that they are aiming for carbon negative. Both CEO's know innovation, working and learning will progress the company forward, as the CEO's report from Said Business School, Embracing the Paradoxes of Leadership and the Power of Doubt, culled "for tomorrow’s CEOs, continuous learning will not be an option, but a must." They know about taking risks, they are determined to do things differently than other companies, they are good with that. They have short term ideas and long term goals, being open to innovation of operating but also of renewables. They began with selling through Facebook, they now have stores, they have launched a product collaboration with Nike, they are open to change.
If Allbirds can keep to their mission of innovation of materials and ideas of sustainability they can be a real large-scale game changer. You can see it in multiple ways, as teamwork, as sharing and supporting of the sustainable community, through shopping wisely, investment, and sharing of materials and systems. For tomorrow’s CEOs, continuous learning
will not be an option, but a must.Thanks for thinking about the planet!
Allbirds.ca/pages/sustainable-practice
Christopher Marquis, Forbes, ‘Steal Our Approach To Sustainability’ Allbirds Co-CEO Joey Zwillinger on How the Company Responds to Copycats, Dec, 2021.
Sue Mitchel, ATM Insights, Portfolio News, Sept 27, 2020, https://www.tdmgrowthpartners.com/insight/tdm-invests-in-allbirds-us100-series-e/
Said Business School, Heidrick and Struggles, The CEO Report, Embracing the Paradoxes of Leadership and the Power of Doubt
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