A Shoe Manufacturer Born In Silicon Valley Made Wool And Sneakers A Perfect Match.

After the autumn and winter season on the boat

At the same time, you may need a pair of wool sports shoes.

Wool seems to be out of touch with sports.

But in Silicon Valley, this magic formula is also proven to work.

Graduated from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and former New Zealand footballer Tim Brown, co founded Joy Zwilgar, a bioengineer who focuses on renewable resources, with a wool based technology.

。

Allbirds's flagship product is recyclable New Zealand Merino wool.

The wool running shoes and casual shoes made by Italy Reda woolen mill.

Brown hopes to create a sports shoes that can be combined with comfort and environmental protection, which can meet the needs of sports and wear to the daily life scenes.

The characteristics of light, durable, breathable and bacteriostasis of wool can bring more experience to wear.

In 2014, Brown released a test product of Allbirds on Kickstarter, a publicly funded website. Within 4 days, he collected a $120 thousand raise fund, and more than 6000 buyers of intentional buyers.

The company's products were launched on the official website of the company in early March 2016.

At present, the main products of Allbirds are sports shoes for men and women.

And slippers, sports shoes and casual shoes are priced at $95.

Allbirds, which has come out of Silicon Valley, has received a total of $27 million 500 thousand in financing and developed very rapidly. In 2016, it built its own e-commerce platform. In 2017, Allbirds opened its first physical store; Hollywood superstar Leonard and Dicaprio also became shareholders of the company.

Now, Allbirds can even open the physical store to the bustling area of New York.

In early September, Allbirds just opened a permanent flagship store in Prince Street, SoHo District, New York, with a total area of more than 4800 square feet.

The company has planned to open 8 new stores in Chicago, Boston, Losangeles, Washington, San Francisco and other places in 2019.

Moreover, in 2017, Eric Haskell, managing director of the Asia Pacific region of Under Armour, joined Allbirds as president of the company's international business in 2017.

It can be seen that the development goal of Allbirds is not limited to the United States.

Allbirds and its products have proved to the public that wool materials are also suitable for sports products, because light, soft and lightweight wool is lightweight, durable, breathable and bacteriostatic. It not only brings light foot feel, but also reduces odor, reduces machine smell and washable speed.

It can be said that Allbirds has accelerated the pace of wool entering the sports goods market.

Recently, Nike has added wool ingredients to some of the styles of Air Max and Air Jordan sports shoes, and has also launched the wool sports shoes products with the clothing company Pendleton. CONVERSE has launched the wool version of canvas shoes jointly with the clothing brand Woolrich, and Adidas has added wool materials to the sports shoes Ultra Boost.

In addition, luxury brand Ermenegildo Zegna also launched a $525 beautiful Merino wool sports shoes; Austria shoe brand Giesswein also introduced wool running shoes in the winter of 2017.

In the future, wool may become a regular material for sports shoes and clothing products.

Matt Powell, a sports industry analyst at NPD, believes that sports brands need new elements and selling points to stimulate the consumption of fans.

The freshness of wool material and the advantage of material itself may attract many consumers who are innovative and pursue brand.

The increase in demand for wool in the sports shoes industry has also led to a rise in wool prices.

"It can only rise and not drop," said Stewart McCullough, an Australian wool innovation company that supplied 90% of the world's wool and wool, CEO blogger told Bloomberg.

Famous sports brands are in line with wool. Allbirds seems to face competition with industry giants at the beginning of its development.

But in the eyes of founder Brown, big companies do not introduce all wool made of sneakers because of the relatively high cost of wool sports shoes, which has made the Allbirds product a "full wool" feature.

Allbirds launched Eucalyptus sports shoes in early 2018

Allbirds seems to be keen to use all new materials in sports shoes.

In 2018, Allbirds also launched sports shoes made from Eucalyptus fibers, which used only 5% of sports shoes for leather, plastic, rubber and other synthetic materials.

Moreover, the sport shoes made of Eucalyptus also solve the problem that wool sports shoes are not suitable for summer and rainy days. Besides, the company has developed a EVA material made from sugar cane extract, replacing the EVA made of petro chemicals and used in the Sugar Zeffers flip flops products.