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Contact: RJ Humphries
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END Outdoor makes Oregon newsThursday, July 03, 2008 | By: The Oregonian Green sneaker maker END treads carefullyBy Brent Hunsberger Now comes Portland startup END, which aims to do what none has dared: market performance running shoes as sustainable footwear. It's a welcome but challenging move, industry experts say. Consumers want fewer wasteful products, but they're also increasingly wary of "greenwashing" -- sustainability claims amounting mostly to marketing. They also want their green shoes to last. "Do we need another air bag?" asks Estey, 42, a former footwear designer at Nike. "I believe the consumer is not asking for that. The more stuff that goes into the shoe, the more resources you're using." END, short for Environmentally Neutral Design, has yet to sell a shoe. But the year-old company has won two angel investment competitions, more than 70 retail accounts, and accolades from other shoe designers and sustainability experts. On Aug. 1, END's trail runners and hikers will go on sale in a handful of Recreational Equipment Inc. stores as well as on the outdoor retailer's Web site. Along the way, the startup must avoid several potential stumbling rocks in its path -- namely, making eco-aware shoes that fail to perform like non-green competitors. "Toyota worked very hard to make sure the Prius performed as a regular automobile," said Pat Devaney, chief sustainability officer at California-based footwear company Deckers Outdoor Corp., which owns the Teva, UGG, Tsubo and Simple footwear brands. "That's what the expectation should be for this performance footwear. A person is not going to spend the money and have it wear out in half the time." Devaney oversees efforts at Simple Shoes, which relaunched its shoes three years ago as fully sustainable -- using hemp, recycled plastic bottles and organic cotton in its designs. But Simple makes sneakers, sandals and children's shoes designed for casual use, not road racing or trail running. Nike has begun sprinkling recycled content into its basketball and running shoes, usually at low proportions. It's also reduced the amount of toxic glues and curbed the amount of supporting material on the outside of some athletic footwear. But unlike Nike, END vows to live and die by its sustainability appeal. It's targeting twentysomething consumers with a specific message, a narrower line of products and midrange prices. Estey said END prices its shoes between $60 and $90 so that recent college grads with their first incomes can afford to buy them. It also plans to make products for outside use -- for beaches, mountain trails and city streets. In spring, it will release lines of low-top running shoes for men and women. "We'll never be in the gym," he said. "We'll never be on the court."  Doug Beghtel/The OregonianEND co-founder Ben Finklea (white t-shirt) at the startup's June 19 launch party at the Ace Hotel in Portland.Investors have liked END's plan. The company won $100,000 from last year's Zino Society Zillionaire Investment Forum in Seattle and $150,000 in March as overall winner of the Angel Oregon competition. END's sustainable claims revolve mostly around what's left out of its shoes. Estey has pared down what he considered over-engineered reinforcements found in most running and trail shoes, leaving less foam in the collar and smaller track-and-field-style backs in the heel. The shoes also lack liners on the inside -- and plastic decor that covers the outside of most running shoes, especially trail runners, but that generates a lot of waste on the factory floor, Estey and other designers say. END's laces and webbing in the upper portion of the shoe are made from recycled plastic bottles; its interior linings are made from bamboo-infused nylon. Its sandals will boast cork-infused bottoms. In addition, Estey says, the shoes use less cement and glue and about one-third less time and labor to assemble than its competitors. Four independent footwear designers who checked out END's Stumptown trail runner at The Oregonian's request said they were impressed with its look, its solid yet lightweight feel and its construction. They noted that the shoe's logo and other aesthetic features were embroidered, screen printed or die-cut, instead of welded on, a process that generates more plastic waste. "That's a step in the right direction," said Carl Jonsson, a former footwear designer at Nike now at New, a Portland industrial-design firm that counts Simple Shoes among its clients. "You're adding reinforcement but not a lot of junk." "It's like an old, old Nike, maybe even lighter," said Toren Orzeck, owner of Portland industrial-design firm Fuse ID. "It feels like it's like a throwback, but a throwback in a good way." Yet, sustainability experts questioned one of Estey's claims: that END's midsoles and outsoles contain up to 20 percent and 30 percent recycled rubber, respectively. Athletic-shoe soles don't perform well with more than 7 percent used rubber, said Phil Berry, former footwear sustainability director at Nike who now owns consulting firm Sustainable Product Works. With higher recycled content, running-shoe soles become prone to ripping apart, slipping on wet surfaces or losing cushioning more rapidly. "This is a really good-quality shoe," Berry said after examining END's Stumptown 12. But, he added, "I question how good-performing their product can be at those levels. The physics just doesn't work." Estey acknowledged those challenges. Just before producing its first line, END reduced the proportion of recycled content in its midsoles to 15 percent after they compressed too much during wear tests, Estey said this week. He emphasized that END's primary focus is reducing the waste, materials and energy used in making shoes. "The biggest thing that we're trying to do is the reduce part of it," he said. "It's all about doing more with less to simplify the manufacturing process." Like most footwear manufactures, END makes its shoes in Asia -- a big strike against it from a resource-consumption standpoint. Kim Sheehan, associate professor of advertising at the University of Oregon and co-founder of marketing watchdog Web site www.greenwashingindex.com, said END is treading carefully down the sustainability path. "They're very aware of the challenges facing the footwear industry, and I think they're very upfront that the footwear industry is nowhere near the top of sustainable production," she said. "They're making careful and strategic decisions on all facets of how they're introducing their products in order to make sure they can keep their sustainable credibility." --Brent Hunsberger;
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Sneaker makers are going greener, step by step, cobbling soles from recycled tires and laces from used plastic milk jugs. But getting used, hardened rubber to hold up under a runner's pounding has eluded even a multibillion-dollar conglomerates such as Nike.