What is sustainable production?

You didn't say Zip!

For the production, there again, all is not all white or all black. We were looking for a production site capable of offering high quality running shoes, as close as possible to France to limit our CO2 emissions, with high social standards guaranteeing the well-being of the staff and of course with costs allowing us to to exist and to develop. The ideal would have been to produce in France but we did not find enough technical know-how to produce running shoes that lived up to our expectations. Italy presented itself as a good candidate but given the proposed costs, it is better suited to luxury brands. China has a bad reputation for working conditions in its factories, but the reality is that it has changed a lot today. Renowned brands such as Sézane produce all or part of their collections in China in factories that socially have nothing to envy to their European competitors. Still, there are some issues with producing there. First of all, transporting the goods from China to France is not the most ecological solution. Then building a commercial relationship of trust is in our view more delicate given the cultural difference linked to business. Finally, Chinese factories require production minimums of several thousand pieces, which we absolutely cannot afford.

In the end, the only advantage of producing in China remained the extremely competitive costs (two to three times cheaper than in Portugal…). Our choice finally fell on Portugal, a country recognized for its know-how in footwear, governed by strict social standards (like all European countries, by the way), and charging prices that we can afford. All that remained was to find a factory capable of assembling bi-material running shoes with a high level of finish. There are very few in Portugal that are more specialized in leather city shoes (such as ankle boots, derby, etc.) or mono-material sneakers (Stan Smith type). Fortunately, we were able to count on the help of our agent who put us in touch with one of the few factories capable of working with this type of product. We went to visit them last summer and we can trust them with our eyes closed.

We look forward to revealing the fruits of their labor to you. A little more patience, everything will happen on Ulule in a few weeks.

Thanks for reading us 😊

See you soon,

The Meeko team