Strategic Management and Sustainability #75
Fashioning a better future : VEJA and its responsible practices
Good morning everybody, and welcome to this week’s newsletter.
Today, we look at the controversy surrounding fair fashion. The fashion industry could combine profit, justice, and fairness. To illustrate this, we look at a case in point: VEJA.
Written by Nahia Collas, Caroline Pilgaard, Isabella Kjos-Hanssen and Pia Charlotte Alm.
This article is 1455 words and takes 9.5 minutes to read.
Fashion is a glamorous world.
Fashion is a glamorous world. Once upon a time, fashion and fairness were unrelated social domains whose values were instead seen as contradictory and inordinate. Activist producers of eco-responsible clothing in the 1970s disapproved of the throwaway and wasteful spirit of fashion. They sought to stand out from the world of polluting fashion by developing sustainable basics. For a long time, creating “green fashion” was seen as an oxymoron.
Core to their self-categorization as moral agents are issues like waste reduction, water contamination, upcycling, or organic farming on the one hand, and fair payment, cooperative production systems, education of workers, or poverty reduction on the other. To talk numbers, in Britain, more than 1 million tons of textile waste find their way into our landfill sites every year, 50% of which is reusable.
Nowadays, the broader public no longer questions the importance of moral values in the fashion industry. Media coverage of sweatshop labor has become so widespread that no one can escape the catastrophic events and living conditions that lurk at the heart of production factories. Among the controversies, everyone has already heard about the devastating garment factory fire at Rana Plaza in 2013, which killed over 1,100 people, or the Uighur ethnic group, persecuted in labor camps in China.
Yet long before these events, an ethical fashion movement was formed around young fashion designers who wanted to change the immoral practices of fashion production and consumption while maintaining the aesthetic principles of fashion design.
Confronted with the conflicts between aesthetics, morality, and economics that have dominated the fashion industry for many years, it’s impossible to expect ethical fashion designers to willingly use moral frameworks in their self-categorization.
At a time when the fashion industry is decried for its carbon footprint and criticized for opportunistic greenwashing, one brand aims to demonstrate that shoe production is compatible with environmental and societal commitments: none other than VEJA.
WHO IS VEJA?
The eco-responsible brand was born in 2003, created by two young Frenchmen disgusted by the production and overconsumption methods of the Y generation. Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion met in a Chinese factory to follow a social audit of a major fashion brand. The experience turned into a nightmare. The Chinese workers found themselves sleeping 30 to a room, 25 m2 in size, on 5-storey bunk beds, with a space in the middle of the room serving as a shower and toilet. That day, the two future co-founders of VEJA realized that globalization had run its course.
Returning to Paris, Kopp and Morillion decided to reinvent a product and take on the most symbolic consumer item of their generation: the sneaker. It was at the feet of the 90s generation that sneakers moved from the sports field to the street, where they became democratized.
“We were looking for a business with a solidarity economy and low environmental impact in its DNA,” Ghislain recalls.
ECO-RESPONSIBLE, EVEN FROM EARTH
The two young people then flew to Brazil, a country with all the raw materials and factories that protect workers. In the Northeast, on the Atlantic side of the country, in a desolate and arid region, the VEJA co-founders met a cooperative of 35 organic cotton growers supported by a local NGO: ADEC (Associação de Desenvolvimento Educacional e Cultural de Tauá). They grow cotton without fertilizers or pesticides, agroecological cotton. This organic cotton will form the basis of the VEJA shoe and laces. The soles are made from wild rubber harvested from Amazonian rubber trees. The two young Frenchmen buy from Brazilian producers at a fixed price in advance, in accordance with the principles of fair trade. VEJA buys cotton respecting fair trade rules and has long-term commitments to the cooperatives. VEJA offers twice the market price to the Brazilian producers to buy their organic cotton.
Indeed, this “clean sourcing” is expensive. VEJA bought its organic cotton for 2.82 euros a kilo, 63% more expensive than the world market price. The difference is even more staggering for rubber: 2.77 euros per kilo for natural Amazonian rubber versus 1.35 euros for synthetic.
“While social justice and environmental protection are the most important values in our self-categorization as designers, VEJA also draws on frameworks linked to other moral values. The brand expresses its willingness to support their communities through local manufacturing and to preserve the national heritage of textile production knowledge, thus referring to issues related to globalization and the global justice movement”.
“Other designers are deeply concerned with animal rights when, for example, addressing the use of alternatives to leather in vegan shoes or, as in the following example, the living conditions of the animals that provide the wool; that’s the point of VEJA”. In 2014, VEJA decided to launch leather sneakers, but not just any leather: vegetable-tanned leather.
At the same time, with a factory in San Paolo, the eco-responsible brand is trying out a new kind of fabric made 100% from recycled bottles collected from the streets of Rio and San Paolo: this is “B-Mesh”.
And the bill doesn't stop there! While 95% of the world's sneakers are produced in Asia in factories where working conditions are close to slavery, the French brand has opted to manufacture in Brazilian factories where employee rights comply with ILO (International Labor Organization) regulations. VEJA makes its shoes in the Porto-Alegre region. Brazilian workers are domiciled close to their place of work; their working hours are limited to 40 hours a week, and they all benefit from social security coverage and four weeks of paid vacation.
« Veja's fabrication costs are 3 to 4 times higher than other footwear brands because the trainers and bags are produced with dignity. But Veja´s “no advertising” policy makes it possible to sell trainers at a price that is equal to competitors. »
With its eco-responsible, 100% recyclable sneakers, VEJA´s strategy is perfectly in tune with the circular economy.
ZERO ADVERTISING, ZERO INVENTORY
Did you know that 70% of our costs are spent on advertising, marketing, and communication, while the remaining 30% are spent on the product itself? This observation is at the heart of VEJA. The decision was radical: zero advertising, zero stock.
“Where the big brands overproduce - their margins are such that even when stocked and then sold at 50%, their sneakers remain profitable - we manufacture what our distributors pre-order from us” explains studio director Caroline Bulliot. This way of working is the antithesis of the habits of the big industries, which overproduce, stock, and sell off unsold models.
BANKING, ENERGY... ECO-RESPONSIBLE SUPPLIERS
The two young founders continue their eco-responsible crusade right up to the company's head office. The aim is to be as transparent as possible from the inside. Priority was given to banks without subsidiaries, such as NEF or Crédit Coopératif. Their energy supplier? EnerCop is the only supplier to guarantee 100% green energy. VEJA obtained in 2019 the B Corp certificate, which validates 270 societal, environmental, and governance requirements.
A WAREHOUSE WHERE EMPLOYEES ARE REINTEGRATED INTO SOCIETY
VEJA´s fourth stop is in Bonneuil-sur-Marne, near Paris, in a logistics warehouse run by “Atelier sans Frontiers”. It is here that the manufactured sneakers arrive straight from Brazil before being reshipped to retailers in the European market, both physical stores and e-commerce sites (except for Amazon, with whom VEJA refuses to work). Thanks to this warehouse, over 275 people have subsequently found employment and social stability. In all, more than 388 people have found employment after working at VEJA Logistics.
ARE ALL THE PEOPLE SATISFIED ABOUT VEJA?
But the brand is not without its critics. The durability of the sneaker is not in VEJA´s DNA, as it may be for brands such as PATAGONIA or LOOM. Some customers criticize the shoe for defects such as laces that wear out after just a few weeks or soles that come unstuck. Some question the usefulness of “natural” materials if they are used to making expensive products that don’t last.
The fashion industry remains a conflicted and controversial environment. Although some brands are demonstrating efforts to achieve more responsible production, these efforts are limited. Out of concern for the cost of responsible clothing, many people continue to consume fast fashion, where clothes are made in ways that are the antithesis of fair trade.
References
Schiller-Merkens, S. (2017). Will Green Remain the New Black? Dynamics in the Self-Categorization of Ethical Fashion Designers. Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 42(1 (159)), 211–237. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44176030
Beaujon, A (2020) Pionnière de la basket écolo, Veja veut recycler ses vieux modèles. Challenges. https://www.challenges.fr/green-economie/pionniere-de-la-basket-ecolo-veja-met-un-pied-dans-l-economie-circulaire_725761
Le meme en mieux (2021, 28. september) VEJA : pas vraiment durable, consumériste, fabriqué à l’autre bout du monde… mais pas mal quand même. Habillement et mode. https://www.lmem.net/veja-limites/
Hezzaz, A (2022) Veja, la basket éco-responsable qu'il faut avoir. Lúnion. https://www.lunion.fr/id353247/article/2022-03-27/veja-la-basket-eco-responsable-quil-faut-avoir
Peach (2012, 17. december) VEJA, C’EST AVANT TOUT UNE ENTREPRISE ÉTHIQUE. Peach tendance homme. https://www.peah.fr/veja
Villard, N (2019) Veja, la pépite française de la basket éco-responsable. Capital. https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/veja-la-pepite-francaise-de-la-basket-eco-responsable-1346450
VEJA (2023) Production. https://project.veja-store.com/fr/single/production