Felicity Cooney is an Australian designer who makes shoes and bags from kangaroo leather. Her business is sustainability focused; using solar panels to power the office; recycled paper to print on; recycled cardboard for packagaing; and, the tannery that she works with recylces 40% of the water that they use.
Here's Cooney's top three insights into running a sustainable footwear business.
1. Strong relationships with producers.
I would say it's very important to have close relationships with your producers. My relationship with my tannery is why I feel so confident and why I feel so passionate about talking about sustainability.
2. Talk about sustainability, even if people don't want to listen.
Sustainability isn't necessarily sexy, but I think it is important to talk about it even if it's just to an audience of your peers.
I think about the plastic bag ban, in the context of the fashion industry, we've sort of known about this for 15-20 years that we needed to do this, and it's been a slow sort of wearing away at the public's conscience. The War on Waste made a huge difference to public opinion about it.
I think the fashion industry needs to keep talking about it, even if the consumers aren't exactly ready to listen to it yet.
3. A sustainable business does things differently.
In the beginning, when you have a small company and you're aiming for it to be sustainable, it can be really tricky because people always want to know how you're going to expand, how you're going to grow and how you're going to implement this throughout a bigger business.
I think a lot of times people question it because it's doing the opposite to what's always been done.
But I think it's much easier to grow a small sustainable company than it is to make a big company sustainable. So I think that's something really worth fighting for.
It may be a slower path, but I think it's a better path.
To read more about Felicity Cooney's business, click here.