Kiwi firm’s Hollywood foothold
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Allbirds which has a new jandal range
New Zealand footwear brand Allbirds has snared Oscarwinning actor Leonardo DiCaprio as an investor and has also announced its own twist to a Kiwi classic in the form of an environmentally-friendly jandals.
The amount invested by the Hollywood star was not disclosed.
Allbirds, co-founded by former All Whites captain Tim Brown, also revealed it had developed its own carbon-negative green ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam, derived from sugar cane sourced from southern Brazil.
The company, which calls the material SweetFoam, hopes the invention will revolutionise the global footwear industry, which churns out an estimated 25 billion pairs of shoes a year, with around 300 million pairs discarded annually.
Brown and co-founder Joey Zwillinger, an engineer and renewables expert, aim to introduce the SweetFoam across its product offerings before encouraging the entire footwear industry to follow suit, allowing the open-source use of the special green EVA ingredient.
“The specific component itself is actually a carbon negative component,” explains Zwillinger. “This means it takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than it actually uses to produce this particular foam.”
Debuting in 2016 with a line of sneakers made from Merino wool, the brand introduced its second category made from Eucalyptus trees earlier this year.
“Although wool has been a critically important and central component of how we started, two years later we added a eucalyptus tree fibre in response to our consumers who wanted something a little different to wear in hot conditions,” explains Zwillinger.
“It’s always been about solving consumer problems using a renewable material. This third phase of the sugar cane is a great example of being transformative from a sustainability perspective, but is also simply an incredibly comfortable experience.”
Inspired by Japanese-style zori jandals, the Sugar Zeffer is an example of the SweetFoam in its purest form.
Developed by the brand’s product development team in conjunction with its sustainability department, the design was led by another clever Kiwi, Head of Design Jamie McLellan. The jandals are available in four key colourways, inspired by nature and New Zealand’s native birds.
“The goal is to extend the foam to all our footwear, but we’re starting with a jandal, flip-flop, thong or a zori — whatever you want to call it, depending on where you come from,” laughs Brown. “The zori is an iconic Japanese sandal dating back to the 11th century, and jandal I think is a portmanteau of Japanese and sandal, so it’s become this iconic Kiwi piece of footwear.”
Featuring interchangeable straps made from four materials: recycled plastic bottles, bio-suede, bio-foam, bio thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) the straps were also made with the help of one of the largest manufacturers of bras.
The new Sugar Zeffer range comes on the back of last week’s major news for the brand — the forthcoming expansion into the UK market in October. Available already in the US, New Zealand, Canada and Australia, the UK expansion is an answer to growing consumer demand, and will be overseen by the brand’s recent appointment of a new international president, Erick Haskell.