Inside Veja's Direct Supplier Model and Repairs Push
Published on April 29th, 2021
PC: Vogue - Camilla Coutinho
Veja is known for its sustainable practices and celebrity following, but its ability to profitably scale footwear production via direct and close relationships with its suppliers is what really sets it apart. Now it’s getting into repairs. Will other footwear brands follow?
“Everybody told us the same thing when we launched Veja: ‘You are crazy, your shoes are so expensive to make, and you don’t advertise, nobody cares about a sneaker that would respect the environment and the workers. It is never going to work,’” says co-founder Sébastien Kopp.
The Paris-based brand, which now employs a team of 200, brought in $120 million in annual sales in 2020, up from $78.5 million in 2019. It’s profitable, and has been since its 2004 launch. Its sustainability initiatives include releasing its emissions footprint, using cotton grown with regenerative practices, and recycling and repairing sneakers, a programme the brand started last June. The company also works directly with the communities it sources from, an anomaly in footwear and fashion more broadly. When Veja considers next steps for improving its social and environmental footprint, it thinks of impacts first, economics and profitability second, says Kopp. In that sense, Kopp and co-founder François-Ghislain Morillion have implemented what critics and scientists have been wanting to see more of from sustainability efforts in fashion and beyond.
PC: Vogue - Camilla Coutinho
“The future is to integrate social impact, economic impact, economic justice into the company — not on the side,” Kopp says. “We built Veja integrating everything into the company. It’s much more expensive, but with much more love inside and much more reality inside.”
“Give trust in order to recieve trust.”
In Brazil, where Veja does most of its sourcing and manufacturing, the key to its operations from both a business perspective and a sustainability perspective is the close relationships the founders have cultivated with their producer communities since launch.
“He’s really integrated and got the respect of everyone, because he gave all his life to the project. He lived in Brazil. He knows the people, he sits together, he eats the same food, he participates in the same things,” says head of sourcing Beto Bina about co-founder Morillion, whose Portuguese has become so good, Bina says, that Brazilians can’t tell he’s a foreigner anymore.
Maria Valdenira Rodrigues, an agronomist who coordinates the cotton supply chain for Veja, says the way the company works allows her to know all 1,000 producers by name. “It’s not just about buying. It’s about the human factor,” she says (through Bina, who translated).
PC: Veja
The company requires farmers to practice agroecology, which is essentially the philosophy behind regenerative agriculture, but the policy was in place before the term took off. Its use of long-term contracts have enabled a reliable cotton supply. Veja guarantees it will buy cotton before farmers ever put seeds in the ground, says Rodrigues, and they also pay a transitional premium for farmers converting to supply for Veja, even if they’re not certified yet. That’s important for building trust and giving farmers the confidence to actually make the transition, says Bina. “Most brands don’t give any incentives. They just want to buy later, and I think we need to take the first step. We need to give trust in order to receive trust.”
The ongoing relationship also helps ensure more successful environmental initiatives: for example, Veja sources natural rubber from communities in the Amazon, where it is also promoting forest conservation, but conservation messages can easily fall on deaf ears if local communities aren’t benefiting or don’t agree with the priority. “You’re from Paris and you’re going to dictate how they should behave, how they should not destroy the forest? No,” says Kopp. “It takes working there for six or seven years — they see that yes, I make more money with the rubber, and it’s also protecting the forest.”
PC: Vogue - Camilla Coutinho - Forest where the wild rubber trees grow and are tapped
Working this way is more expensive on a number of fronts, and may not always make financial sense. “It’s not just about sustainable products, it’s about sustainable models for lasting positive impact to the environment,” says Beth Goldstein, footwear industry analyst at The NPD Group. “These can benefit the brand in many ways. While it might take some time to realise these benefits, I think there will ultimately be risk in not doing these things.”
Another potential risk Veja has taken: offering and promoting repair services. Since opening a “test hub” last June for repairing and recycling shoes, Veja has repaired more than 1,000 pairs of shoes at its space in the Darwin “urban ecosystem” in Bordeaux, France. While other shoe companies have touted plant-based materials and designing for circularity, these efforts rely on sales of new products to succeed. Most brands offering repair are higher-end, such as Allen Edmonds and Red Wing, says Goldstein. The bulk of sustainability efforts still focus on sourcing and manufacturing practices, not services like repair, which some say could offer a path to reducing a company’s reliance on sales of new products.
PC: Ory Minie - Veja x Darwin repair and recycling center in France.
“We created the store in a holistic vision: what is a cost today can be the engine of tomorrow’s economy,” Kopp says. “Repairing pairs is magic: you give a new life to what would go to trash. We are talking about making the product last 30 per cent more. It is magic for us. It has no price.” Asked if its repair efforts risked cannibalising sales of new shoes, Kopp says, “We don’t know and we don’t want to know.”
Goldstein says repairs can make business sense in the long run. Citing a recent NPD and CivicScience poll, she says customers most want durability and quality in sustainable products.
“My answer [for other companies working on sustainability] is, please go to the field, go to the factory where you produce the garments. Feel it. Talk to the workers. It enhances everything,” says Kopp. “It’s not a question of business, of money. It’s a question of what do you do with your life?”