Adidas and Allbirds trade secrets for game-changing shoe
Sportswear giant Adidas has teamed up with footwear start-up Allbirds to create the world’s most sustainable sneaker.
Few industries keep a tighter lid on intellectual property than the sneaker and sportswear trades. But recently, two competing companies defied the status quo by making their materials, supply chains, resources and innovations available to one another: Adidas, the global sporting giant has joined forces with Allbirds, a certified B-Corporation footwear start-up that’s beloved by Silicon Valley types.
In 2020, the pair announced they would be teaming up on an ambitious new project aimed at making the sneaker and sportswear trade greener. And today, the first product from the unprecedented partnership has been unveiled: a pair of white running shoes with a record-low carbon footprint of 2.94kg per pair.
According to both brands, the ‘Futurecraft. Footprint’ sneakers took 63 per cent less emissions to make than comparable running shoes. Recent reports suggest the global footwear industry pumps 700 million metric tonnes of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere every year.
The partnership is significant for a number of reasons, not least because it shows what’s possible when two leaders in the same field unite. Of course, this result couldn’t have been achieved by either brand alone – while Adidas’ global supply chains and limitless resourcing made the sneakers possible to produce, it was Allbirds’ agility, technology and culture of fabric R & D that helped to inform the properties of the final product.
“Our partnership with Allbirds is a beacon of what can happen when competing brands from the same industry see the possibilities in coming together to design,” said Executive Board Member, Global Brands, at Adidas Brian Grevy. “This is a call-to-action for other brands, and a milestone in the sports industry [towards] achieving carbon neutrality.”
As promised by the initial announcement, the all-white fly-knit sneakers, which are reminiscent of Adidas’ popular ‘Lightstrike’ design and tested to the same performance standards, took just under 12 months to develop. As the teams are based on different continents – Adidas in Germany and Allbirds in San Francisco – the entire design process was completed digitally. Over daily video calls, they reimagined materials, manufacturing techniques and even packaging to arrive at the smallest carbon footprint possible, without compromising on performance.
Tim Brown, a New Zealand native and the co-founder of Allbirds, says the cutting-edge sneaker is an example of what’s possible when collaboration is involved, especially in relation to solving climate change.
“We need to find new business models, new innovations and new ways of working together. Our partnership with Adidas is an example of that. Over the past year, our two teams have raced as one to create a shoe as close to zero carbon emissions as we could possibly achieve.”
Prototypes of the sneakers are being raffled off to members of Adidas’ ‘Creators Club’ this month, before a limited run of 10,000 pairs is made available in Adidas stores around the world later this year.