Shoe brand Koio launches a vegan sneaker
Six years ago, when Koio cofounders Chris Wichert and Johannes Quodt set out to create a luxury shoe company, they sought to bring the craftsmanship of Italian leather shoes to the American market. Since then, the company has reworked its supply chain to be more sustainable and launched what it claims is the world’s first fully regenerative sneaker. Now, Koio– which plans to source all of its materials from regenerative farms by 2025– is debuting a separate vegan shoe line called Pale Blue Dot.
The line, named after a historic photograph of planet Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990, is marketed as a cheaper alternative to Koio’s luxury leather shoes with a pair retailing at $165. The upper shoe is made from apple leather and the soles from recycled rubber– insoles are made from cork.
“There is a good chance that in 10 years, plant-based materials will be superior—in terms of sustainability, in terms of function, in terms of touch, look, and feel—than the best materials that we have available right now,” Quodt says. “For that reason, we decided we want to take part in advancing the right materials and the right technologies in the plant-based space in order to advance the overall sector towards a more sustainable future.” The first sneakers in the Pale Blue Dot line are available in four colors across both men’s and women’s sizes and on the Koio website or in their New York and Los Angeles stores.
The company is also entering a market for vegan shoes where demand has skyrocketed over the past few years. According to Future Market Newswire, the market for vegan footwear is expected to grow to more than $76 billion by 2030. Pale Blue Dot will compete with the likes of Veja, which debuted its vegan sneaker in 2019 using cotton and canvas that was waxed with a compound made from corn waste. Other brands ranging from Rothy’s to Flamingos’ Life have also ventured into the vegan footwear industry in the past few years.
Koio is one of several brands, including Louis Vuitton and Adidas, to have produced “sustainable” sneakers with most companies making an effort to incorporate recycled materials into their creations. But the mixture of plastic, leather, rubber, foam, and adhesives means sneakers can take 1,000 years to biodegrade, and the vast majority of them end up in landfills according to The Guardian. Koio has been working to solve this problem, too, launching a 99% biodegradable sneaker, dubbed Mello, in April made from regenerative leather, a biodegradable sole made from rubber-tree milk and a biodegradable insole made from plants like corn and kenaf.
That breakthrough came a year after the company reworked its supply chain to launch what it called the world’s first regenerative sneaker. To produce the shoes, the company sources the leather upper from non-industrial farms in Switzerland that do not obtain hides from slaughterhouses before sending the leather to a tannery in Germany that uses vegetable dye to tan them. Soles are made with Forest Stewardship Council-certified and recycled rubbers.
As Koio looks to the future, Quodt says the company will continue to learn and adapt from each new sustainable shoe launch, ultimately aiming to make a 100% biodegradable and regeneratively-sourced shoe.
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