Australian director of Indosole, Nick Riley, gives his three top tips into keeping a sustainable footwear business viable, long after the hype dies down.
1. Let the product speak for itself.
I think our primary goal is to have a product where people aren't going in there and going, 'I'm going to buy them purely because they're sustainable.'
We want to provide something where people go, 'I love the look of that colour,' or, 'have you worn those Indosole slides or thongs? They are so comfortable.'
We are a sustainable brand, but it's not our primary message that we're getting out there straight away. We want our product to speak for itself.
Yeah it's a fad [sustainability awareness] right now but for us, that's a long-term thing. We want to create this platform where people are buying into us because of our product, because of our quality and because of our marketing.
2. Create a culture around the brand.
I'll use an example, Insight clothing, when they had their boom, they created a culture and they really did that better than anyone.
I became a part of that, all my friends became a part of that and the actual message of it, people stopped thinking about it.
But they had created this thing where we were like, 'hey we want to go and do this, we want to be a part of that,' the message of it actually got lost because they had actually done that in a way that it was welcoming to every single person.
I think we're all sort of guilty of it, when you hear someone saying something and then you want to be a part of it just because they're interested in it.
So if I can create that relation between our product or our business to our consumers, I think it's going to be a much more long-term game for us than just this sustainable fad that everyone's going through – [but] hopefully that sticks around too.
That's the end goal, I hope that [the sustainability awareness] sits there and [this] is just the slow start to the transformation to way everything and the whole world is going to go. It needs to happen and I hope it's finally starting to happen.
3. Look for ways to evolve the business.
We want to evolve as a business as well, and we still have room to do it.
We're not 100 per cent there and I'm not saying that we are, but as time goes on we will evolve our product – we will always make our product out of recycled tyres [but we might] find a new rubber that we can use or we will find a new glue that is 100 per cent water-based – but if we can manage to create that platform for people to feel a part of and want to be a part of, then I think over time, people are going to attract to that.
So I think long-term for us as a company, if we nail [the culture] and then in the back-end we are this sustainable company [then I think we will last as a business].