Transcript - John Matthews
Joshua Williams: Retail Revolution is a special, limited podcast created specifically for "Retailing and Service Design," a unique course that is part of the Fashion Management graduate program at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Each episode features in depth conversations with guest experts in omnichannel retailing, with myriad perspectives: technology, consumer engagement, data analytics, merchandising, and more. We pay special attention to the short and longterm challenges and implications of COVID-19 and potential opportunities to rethink retail's future. Retail Revolution is produced by Joshua Williams and hosted by Christopher Lacy, both are Assistant Professors in the School of Fashion at Parsons.
Christopher Lacy: I'm your host, Christopher Lacy, and welcome to another episode of Retail Revolution podcast. Please be sure to subscribe to Retail Revolution podcast on your preferred streaming platform; you can find us on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. You can also access our blog transcripts and previous episodes at RetailRevolutionPodcast.com.
Today, we have John Matthews, CEO of Avrio Footwear, an eco-brand making shoes using algae plastic pulled from the ocean and recycled materials. Launching this July, we are happy to have John here to tell us all about Avrio and the power of transparency as a retailer. Welcome to the show, John.
John Matthews: Thank you very much, Christopher. I appreciate your time.
Christopher Lacy: John, you did not start out in fashion or retail. So, can you tell us about how you got here?
John Matthews: Certainly, certainly I do have way back in my college day, I did have a short stint in retail at JCPenny, but I didn't draw any experience that's relevant to footwear, Prior to this, I was a Chief Operating Officer for Algix and for Bloom; bloom is actually the source of the algae that goes into Avrio.
After spending five years with Algix and Bloom and spending the better part of two years plus in Asia, I realized that there is a significant issue with the ecology, the impact that we have, the environmental impact going on over there. And I began talking with some of my other associates, what could we do to change that path, that course of action, to change the future, as we like to say it at Avrio. That drew myself and my team into looking at footwear to utilize the foams driven by Bloom. That sort of led us down the path of looking at other, what we qualify as material heroes, other suppliers, other change-makers, the technology that they were driving to change the future of our use of sustainable materials, all the way through.
So, what we've done is we've sought out, parnered with, identified, helped them grow their business. While we in turn incorporated their thoughts, their materials, and their expertise into our footwear. And that sparked what we call this material revolution. And actually, this began pre sustainability. No one mentioned sustainability, if you look back at 2015. If we were able to go to a show this year, this summer, this spring, you'd see sustainability everywhere, much like I did last fall. So, Avrio is born out of what we thought was a absolute need to change our course.
Christopher Lacy: I appreciate you saying change your course. When Jordanna Guimaraes reached out to me and she said, Chris, you have to talk to John about this brand. You're going to love it. They're really doing something different. And she told me the tagline of the brand, which really is to make tomorrow better. Is that correct?
John Matthews: To make tomorrow beautiful. Yes. Even the name, the name Avrio, we received a trademark on it, in Greek means tomorrow or the future. And what better way to name a brand with really driving what our focus is, what our ethos is, all the way through everything we do.
Christopher Lacy: When you thought of doing this, you had come from this background of things being the exact same way all the time. I'd love for you to take us through just the technology and the approach to Avrio has taken to manufacture shoes that's completely different and really a revolution in how transparency and manufacturing is going on in Avrio.
John Matthews: Sure. And again, let's back up and see what I witnessed when I was in Asia. I personally went through these factories because we were authenticating them and approving them and basically inspecting these factories for Bloom. We wanted to make sure, and granted they had passed multiple brand's reviews, but still what I required of the factories that I would be given full access with my phone with my camera to walk anywhere in the facility inside, outside. You're speaking with people, obviously it's a bit difficult over there. My Chinese is not, not very well. My Vietnamese, or Taiwanese is not very, I'm not capable or skilled at it. But the facilities that gave us this work, they did a great job, in my opinion. The ones that Bloom selected passed, but there were still issues that I witnessed in terms of the way that they were managing their disposal of some of their units, where the wastewater was going, how the manufacturing was going, what they were doing with waste products? And I looked at all of that and I thought, there's gotta be a way that we could use that more successfully as a consumer. So, how do we change that consumer base, but what can we use, and what even pathways can we recommend on their manufacturing end, to make those changes. And some of the ones in Vietnam, they were wholy behind what I was doing for us. So, I got to meet with the owners. And that in turn drove us when we looked at Bloom, what impact can we have? What's going to have the greatest impact. And with 20 billion pairs of shoes sold every year, granted not all of them using a Bloom-type product, or having the same abilities to build a complete shoe, and all the materials we're talking about. But that would be a huge impact that we can make on the quality and cleanliness of the air of the water, of the upcycle materials, as well as giving us an opportunity to think with the end in mind, what can we do when we construct the shoe, to be able to deconstruct the shoe for recycling of the shoe.
So, we'd like to say you wear a pair of Avrios, you voted and made a conscious decision with your purchase to change the future, alter the timeline. And when you're done with the Avrios, you should bring them back, send them back, they can be ground up or melted down and turned into future Avrio models. It was a twist, but it didn't incorporate everything. I think that the cherry is the transparency of the whole product as well.
Christopher Lacy: Let's talk about transparency of the product. A lot of companies have told us as consumers that they're transparent. Why do you feel Avrio approaches transparency differently?
John Matthews: Transparency for example, a carbon offset...we have a carbon offset of about 450/460 hours of cellular foam charging. That's done by, we had a life cycle analysis done, it's done by weight of our materials, built into the shoe, in terms of our carbon offset. But you can say we're a hundred percent, if a brand comes in and says we're a hundred percent carbon offset, or that's our goal. How far to each side do you look? Are you talking about if the UPS truck comes and picks it up, or I want to give a shout out to FedEx as well—I don't want to pick a flavor—whenever DHL comes to pick up your order, they're not driving an electric vehicle that you offset that carbon, you know, how far up and down that stream do you want to look for that full carbon offset?
And again, even with regards to the bloom algae, there are brands out there that are showing and qualifying as an algae shoe, but the percentage of algae is so low, they're not really saying what percent of that shoe, includes algae. And I can tell you the Avrio shoe, actually, when it hits the market, it will be the largest content of Bloom algae foam. So, it'll have algae foam content throughout the shoe, on the insole; basically, anywhere there's foam in the shoe will have some level of algae. And we'll be completely transparent of what those percentages are, where the algae came from, where the algae pellets came from, where Bloom ran it through their facilities until it made it to the shoe. So, with the ocean plastic made from the upper, we have partnered with OceanWorks, an incredible organization that has developed a marketplace for these recycled materials. And OceanWorks in their marketplace is pre-approved and their suppliers, which become our suppliers in this marketplace. But they also track which ocean the plastic came out of, where it went for sorting, where it went for processing, where it was turned into the yarns that are sewn into our uppers and all the way through.
So, it's literally from ocean to foot on our shoe. We're posting all of that information. So, an owner of the shoe that made that decision is going to be able to hit a QR code and they'll be able to tell their friends and family the plastic on my shoe in my shoe came from this solution on this day. And here's the path it travelled.
We're hoping that other shoe brands will actually adopt and utilize Vanessa Coleman's OceanWorks. It's an incredible organization. Likewise, with Bloom. Similarly, so with Blue Macaw, who is making our midsole, outsole and our insole which contains recycled shoe components all the way through and a brand new technology that uses significantly less water in the high percentiles. I'm talking, you know, 60, 70, 80% less water in the way that they manufacture their molds, and the way that they replicate their materials, to the point where there's 10 to 15% of what qualifies as virgin materials in the midsole, outsole; the bottoms of the shoes that are virgin, the rest is recycled shoes. That's another incredible technology.
And we have assembled these teams, both to share and highlight what they're capable of doing, but to be transparent of what went into our shoe, very clearly stated, very supportable, not by the Aperio team, but by third parties.
Christopher Lacy: Consumers don't care that much about product. They do, but product isn't the first thing on their mind because they can get product anywhere. So, when we think of what Avrio is doing, you're cleaning up oceans, you're cleaning up lakes. There's transparency with the shoes. I have to say, I've seen them. The design of the shoes are amazing. I already have a favorite pair I want, so do you think that really, this is going to change the mindset of consumers? Once they get into the Avrio brand and part of the family, do you think this will change how consumers purchase going forward and think of brand identity in the future?
John Matthews: I think we've already witnessed that to some extent. People are truly looking at these shoes from the algae content. It took off early on in the footwear space when Bloom started to gain a foothold with some of the brands. And one actually sold out before they, before they were finished production, they had already sold out when they were showing it online. And this was in early 2016. So, I believe that the consumer is there.
I think now the consumer really wants to have a little bit more education to understand, because the word sustainability has become so universal, I don't think there, it's losing the clarity of that definition of it. We'd like to bring that clarity. We'd like to educate the consumer a little further.
But this would be a dream of mine. Let's say you're wearing your favorite pair of Avrios that you've pre-selected. And somebody comes up to you and says, Oh, that's a kind of, that's a really cool shoe. What is that? The first words out of your mouth that I would want, this would be one of my dreams. Oh, let me tell you about the shoe. Oh my gosh. So this, that all the top part of the fabric came out of the ocean. It came out of the Indian Ocean, this pair, and it traveled through this pipeline and got it to my shoe. And I know where it was and the leather on the shoe was recycled, but it's the little granulars of the leather, not the big pieces that can still be into a wallet. They're ground up powderized and then turned into, you know, sheeted and put back on the shoe. Oh, oh and the outsole see, you can see all the algae. That's algae foam and it's recycled material. So, other shoes that are in the bottom of this shoe. Okay, but what do they called? Oh, Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, they're Avrios and here's where you can go get them. Super cool shoe all the way down, and I didn't even get into the part about the protective coating, because antimicrobial, antifungal, all of these things, we're going to be the first shoe that's fully coated with this antimicrobial called OxiTex, so the shoe can't smell. The shoe can't get, you know, you're not going to get athlete's foot in it; all of these beneficial factors of it, which is already EPA approved, and already used in coatings, already used in the medical field, but not on footwear. Another example of somebody with a brilliant idea, who wasn't looking beyond the medical field to utilize in fashion.
And this works, I'm hoping to drive other fashion manufacturers, clothing wise to this organization called QuickMed Technologies; amazing product in OxiTex.
Christopher Lacy: I want us to be able to go deeper into this cause when you and I talked about the coating, I do want our listeners to understand how important this is. This particular anti-microbial coating, the way this is done, because this is something our students have been talking about when it comes to athleisure wear, and the importance of it at this time. Right? So, we were looking at a COVID-19 post-pandemic situation, how we're engaging. Can you really break down for our listeners what that means with coating? I don't know that many people know what the coating on their shoe currently does. And why, what Avrio's coating on its shoes is so important?
John Matthews: You hit it right on the head as well. It's very important to note, the differentiation. Most of the issues that are going to be anti-microbial, have some sort of this content of silver. So, silver in the shoe, it will kill the bacteria and the bacteria consumes the silver and dies, right? And the silver is already base element. So, it's always, it remains in that universe. It remains on our planet forever and ever; there's no more decay on it. But any activity, any bacteria good or bad that consumes it is going to die. It is harmful to the environment. Silver as an antimicrobial was banned in the EU a years ago.
Our material is hydrogen peroxide based. H2O2. Right? It's bound to the shoe; it's coated on the shoe. It has an immediate kill, a log five, which is 99.999% kill rate on bacterial and fungus. It is absolutely harmless to anybody that's going to touch the shoe. Because if you think about it as a shoe is worn and used, it breaks down.
If you break hydrogen peroxide, H2O2 down, you've got an oxygen molecule and you've got water; it breaks down to two natural elements. But the shoe itself is regenerative. And this was the hardest thing for me to get. I don't know why it was, but our scientists have gone: you wear the shoe, if you want to regenerate it to a hundred percent efficacy or a hundred percent protection, you wash it in like an Oxy Clean or any peroxide-based detergent like Tide, you wash the shoe, the shoe is now a hundred percent protected again. Now granted, anything, if you go to your coffee table or your counter in your kitchen and you scrape on it and scrape on it, you're going to scrape the top layer off. You can sand off the top layer of the shoe, which removes the binding ability to join those hydrogen and oxygen molecules together and protect it on the shoe.
But overall inside outside of the shoe is an amazing production and it's absolutely harmless to the environment. And it's truly used on the medical industry. it's a fabulous, fabulous, great addition. We haven't promoted it because the education of this antimicrobial is it takes a lot more time, which I appreciate you giving me, to explain it a little bit better.
Christopher Lacy: Well, I think for me, it's that when I hear you talk about that particular technology for the shoe, what it makes me think of is those people who are on fixed incomes where they're purchasing. And because we're eroding at our middle-class, sustainability is not maybe the first thing on their mind. And if it is most sustainable products are at such a price point or a lot of sustainable products might not have the ability to last as long as need be for people who are on a fixed income.
And for me, I think sustainability needs to be accessible for all, because otherwise it makes no sense. Right? We have a portion that's able to do it. And then another portion that can't do it at all. So we're, we're right back at ground zero. This, if I had a family I've got growing boys or growing girls or whatever that looks like, and I have a pair of shoes and I know that I can wash them or spray them with peroxide and then pass it down to their sibling with no problem. You really have just created an upcycling model. Right?
John Matthews: Yes. Yes. And you know, I'll give you one further on that durability and wearability, because I think it's like some components in various products we have, they are built to have some duty cycle, some life into it, then it wears out and we're forced to buy another one.
It's impossible. You're going to wear shoes out. You're going to wear the bottoms out, you know, they will wear out. We went ahead and contracted with a company called HeeLuxe, Dr Jeffrey Gray, who puts the shoes through their paces. Many, many brands you HeeLuxe. Great, great company. They're kind of like the consumer reports. They're not going to endorse any shoe brand. They're going to put it through their paces with their tactical equipment or robotic equipment. They put our shoe, they put the Avrio up against one of the top selling shoes in the market. Which at first concerned me like, oh my gosh, this is the first shoe out of the door with Avrio and we're up against one of the number one national brands in the world. How are we going to do? And we, we, we beat it, we beat it on multiples. And the couple of the pieces that we lost on comfort and, you know, in durability, which were two separate tests, were minimal, minimal things that we needed to correct, which will be correcting in manufacturing and then we'll run another test, once we run everything through. But I was so elated that we had made it through the testing. They put 150 miles of walking on the shoe. They put comfort testing with pressure points. They measured the ball of the foot, the heel of the foot, and then the compression sets of the materials to see how it held up. And it was, it was fantastic. You can go to heelux.com; it's H E E L U X E.com and look at some of those trials that they've done for multiple brands. And if you go to AvrioFootwear.com, you can see the actual robot feet that are wearing ours as they spin around on a treadmill for days and days on it.
And I want to just do another shout out to the OxiTex coating. Oxi O X I dash tex T E X .Com. And that will give you all of the lab reports for those science people that are going to be listening to this, and they want to see the granularity of the testing that's been done. And they've been running COVID testing on that coating as well, to see how successful it'd be against the COVID, and rendering it inactive. And that testing has been going on for three months. So, once we do get final results, they're doing time trials to see how quickly the COVID would become inactive on the substrate. So, I don't want to say anything good or bad about that, but testing is underway by equipment technologies. in one of the COVID labs; you can hear more about that I'm sure from their site.
Christopher Lacy: That's fantastic. What you've been able to do is really, you've taken every concern that a consumer has had, and you've said, how do we create a product that's really around the concerns and answering those concerns mindfully.
And I think what we've seen, as people shopping day-to-day, is its always kind of like, oh, they are kind of that, they're almost there. And then, you know, you come to find out there's information where things aren't ethical, or it wasn't sustainable. And so, I think from this standpoint, you know, talking to you now, hearing even more about it, there is a confidence that I have in the brand and that being really important to building community. And what we've talked about with a lot of our guests is the importance of community to the success of a brand, the importance of community to the future of retail. So, I'd like to hear your thoughts on when you're looking at Avrio as a brand, as an organization, what do see the community being like, and what do you think community will be like for the future of retail?
John Matthews: Everyone tries to take the community and break it down in terms of age demographics or social, economic demographics, which is, it is great for certain products, right? You want to have, there are some age-specific products that are out there. And when people try to place Avrio in a certain market and you can't be everything to everyone, right? You can't have this thing that's, everyone's going to buy, unless it's water or gasoline, even they to, they try to differentiate. But with Avrio, we built this shoe for comfort first and foremost. Right? And well, actually for sustainability first and foremost, but then we'd made sure that we didn't sacrifice comfort. And then we didn't sacrifice style. As you said, you like the style and design of the shoe. So, with sustainability driving everything and really driving that through these partnerships. And, Avrio has actually sponsored several Kickstarter campaigns for shoe brands, for other people that are on the same path, that they want to create a sustainable shoe. And we're looking at whatever we can do to help them. Even shoe manufacturers that are done in the USA. There's Community Made. It's done in Los Angeles. It's Shawn Scott's the CEO. He builds shoes in the US, so we're talking about cooperation, plus collaboration, is the new competition. On our shoe, we built it for comfort. So, if somebody is looking for a very comfortable walking shoe, regardless of the age, they're going to be confident and comfortable as they are walking down the roads. We brought it through with a style for the youth and the look and the feel of the algae foams in the bottom. It's, it's very hip. it looks cool. We built it for the medical industry. So, anybody that services in the nursing homes or works in the hospitals, and I have a lot of friends in the medical field, who've looked at it, they all told me, great, it does all those antimicrobial, it's a hundreds of sustainable, you know, we want to see all of those things that are out there and driving your shoe. But is it comfortable? And does it come in the colors that are going to look at with our scrubs because the hospitals have certain criteria for uniforms. So, we did cross what we believe all of these spectrums, because we never built the shoe to fit into one social, economic or age demographic. But when we market it, it really in different things you know, you push it out on Instagram, you're going to have one sort of presence and who's going to be wearing the shoe. even if you watch our video at avriofootwear.com on that shoe, it's got a lot of different city scenes. It's got outdoor scenes. So, it'll be interesting. I will actually be surprised where we fall. I'm interested in seeing how we fall demographically in Los Angeles. We have a very young crowd. I've got a big following in the UK, which seems to be more of the middle-aged crowd that's following it based on what our return is going to be, but the sales are going to prove it. I cannot wait for the sales to come through and we can really see, where did we hit on it, which age group, and why?
Christopher Lacy: You said collaboration and I think that's going to be really interesting. Cause collaboration has been a big deal in the fashion industry for quite some time, where people get together and create certain looks or a certain design for a particular brand. But when you say collaboration, what I think you really are saying is there space for everyone to be doing what we're doing. And we want everyone to be doing what we're doing.
John Matthews: Yes, isn't that the definition of transparency? We are being transparent. So if one pair of shoes, if one pair of shoes is cleaning 300, 400, are capturing sequestering, CO2 in balloons, and we've got 250 liters of water, it's going to depend on the model, the size roughly, that's clean filtered, the algae's pulled out of the water and dried and turned into these footwear foams. We've got an upcycle of content. We've got about a hundred grams of ocean plastic in the shoe. So, we're saying all of these things, but we're showing other brands on how to do it.
So, multiply that by a million, right? A million pair. And Avrio may or may not sell a million. That'd be great if we did, but if we're able to get other brands and promote these other partners that are producing these products, how much better, what did we do to help the environment? Did we spark it for the new? And people will ask you then, well wait a minute, if you're showing everything, if you have complete disclosure on where are you buying it, what you're producing and how you're doing it, what's to keep another big brand to coming in and just poaching all of it? And then how are you going to keep your suppliers if you're no longer the big guy? Well, guess what? It's our obligation to continually seek out these new change-makers. Cause these people that came up with these new technologies, they came up with it within the last year, you know, last year, year and a half, we just built it, adopted it and identified it and built it into our shoe. We need to continue to do that. Plus, in speaking with the suppliers that are our partners, I'm also hopeful that they won't forget the brand that brought them to the dance. You know, who brought you guys to the dance floor? Who's continually promoting them? I just promoted a shoe manufacturing in Community Made. Footwear brands that aren't going to promote another brand that's making shoes. Well, I believe in what Sean's doing and we're going to be bringing our manufacturing to the US. Avrio will be working on a shoe with Community Made. And, we're gonna create a shoe together that uses you United States labor a hundred percent. So, I'm excited about all of that that.
Christopher Lacy: That's great. I mean, I feel like you could have a second tagline for Avrio, which is Shoes for Changemakers.
I mean, it's, it's
John Matthews: I'm going to write that down. Will you license that to me?
Christopher Lacy: Yeah. It's all yours. This is what I do. John it's been great having you on the show today. From the moment we spoke about Avrio, I knew that it was a brand that I wanted others to hear about. And that being said, how can our listeners stay up to date with what's happening with Avrio and be there to support it as it launches this July?
John Matthews: Thank you. So Avrio is going to be launching through Kickstarter. So, please you can search it by Avrio footwear on the Kickstarter platform that we'll be launching a yes, it'd be launching this month. So, check it out. AvrioFootwear.com is our website. There is an email sign up to keep you up to date. We do not overwhelm you; you don't get an email every day. It's just, as things are progressing through the process, you'll get new information. For example, when the COVID testing came out, you'll be the first to see new design styles. We've got a, another footwear design we've got a sandal and things like that. But those two entities you'll be able to also follow us on Instagram.
If you look back, there were some live events that were done on Instagram a few days ago that you can check out, but there are multiple ways to do it. Plus, you can email at info@AvrioFootwear.com. You will get a response right away. So, there's a lot of content. There are links to all of our material heroes that we have out there.
The video will show you, it's not all about selling the shoe. It's really about identifying our bullets for our future, make tomorrow beautiful.
Christopher Lacy: John, thank you so much. We're looking forward to the success of Avrio. We're looking forward to having you back on again, after the launch, and then we find out what those consumer demographics are globally.
John Matthews: Thank you.
Christopher Lacy: So, thank you so much and have a great day
John Matthews: You as well Chris. Thank you so much for this opportunity. My team is very, very thankful for all that you've done.
Christopher Lacy: Oh, please.
John Matthews: Enjoy your day!
Christopher Lacy: You too.
Joshua Williams: Thank you for listening to this episode of Retail Revolution. A very special thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible, our guests, our students and fellow faculty at Parsons School of Design, especially in such an extraordinary and unprecedented time. Our theme music was composed by Spencer Powell.
Be well and stay tuned for our next episode.
