If you look at the leather shoe industry, you might get the impression that sustainable shoes are in short supply. But there are certainly pioneers who have done important preliminary work in recent decades. Think! from Austria is one of them.
The shoe industry must also become more sustainable. This applies in particular to the classic leather shoe industry, in whose products a large number of different types of material come together from a widely ramified supply chain. But compared to the textile clothing industry, one hears far less sustainable commitment from there. This is not necessarily due to the fact that less is happening there. The Austrian shoe label Think! was founded in 1991 as a sustainable shoe brand and has been part of the Legero United Group since 2000, which also includes the shoe brands Legero and Superfit. Think! is one of the sustainable shoe pioneers and one of the very few brands in the clothing industry whose products are certified with the Blue Angel.
We spoke to Product Manager Christoph Mayer about why the brand works with the Blue Angel, what makes sustainable production more difficult and how sustainability is currently giving the brand a boost.
How did Think! wanted to produce shoes sustainably?
We are really pioneers when it comes to sustainable shoe production. When our founder Martin Koller took over his parents’ shoe factory 31 years ago, which had been producing men’s shoes for a long time, he had the idea of revolutionizing the shoe market with sustainable, comfortable but beautiful shoes. But you have to know that being a pioneer was difficult back then. The materials didn’t even exist yet. He wanted chrome-free, vegetable-tanned leather and the supply was minimal. Since then, sustainability has been our brand core.
How about the vegetable tanned leather? What other tanning methods are there and why do you reject some of them?
There are three main types of tanning: First, tanning with chromium salts. Second, white tanning, which is chemical tanning without chrome. And thirdly, there is vegetable tanning, which works with vegetable tanning agents. We use 85 percent chrome-free tanned leather in the collection and the rest is leather tanned with chrome for technical reasons. Everything that can come into direct contact with the skin is always tanned without the use of chrome, so we are 100 percent uncompromising, even with the lambskins.
Why don’t more companies work with vegetable tanned leather? What are the disadvantages?
This is due to the greater challenge in production, the leather has more character. You don’t have that eternally smooth, flawless, buttery soft leather. Dyeing is also more complex, there are higher color tolerances and our cows and calves may of course have moved, so there are also scars and bumps. It also takes longer to tan, which means it’s more expensive and requires more craftsmanship in the end. Chrome tanning is faster and the leather is often easier to process, which is of particular interest to fashion-driven brands.
How about the colors? Are there differences to chrome tanning?
Leather is now available in all colors, including chrome-free. In any case, the trend played into our hands. For example, vegetable leather used to be less lightfast. If a shoe was in the shop window for a longer period of time, it was faded, which was of course a problem for retailers. Therefore, some had reservations about this leather. In the meantime, however, a lot has changed and more and more retailers are looking for sustainable collections.
What do you think if more and more brands follow their example now? For example, do you feel a shortage of sustainable leather?
No, we don’t feel any shortage of sustainable leathers. Of course, we are honored that many are now starting to do this – almost all of them now have a sustainable model as a highlight in their program. This creates new competition, but ultimately it also increases awareness of the topic. In the meantime, some large retailers have already defined their own standards for their ranges in order to increase the sustainable share, which of course also helps us.
Basically, one can say with certainty that the focus on sustainability has stabilized our sales beyond normality in recent years. If we didn’t have the topic, it would certainly be different.
Think! was the first shoe brand ever – and is still one of the very few – whose products are certified with the Blue Angel. Why the Blue Angel?
Think! was the first shoe manufacturer in 2015 to receive the Austrian eco-label, which is even stricter than the Blue Angel. But the eco-label is not known beyond the borders, the Blue Angel, on the other hand, is very well known. Also: Unlike textiles, there are no shoe-specific certificates so far. Shoes have between 20 and 40 different components. So far nothing has been done on this scale. Of course, all of our suppliers are LWG [Leather Working Group; Anmerkung der Redaktion] certified, but leather is just one component of many.
What does the Blue Angel certify and what does Think! beyond that in terms of sustainability?
The entire production process is checked, from the tannery’s sewage treatment plant to the delivery of the shoe. We have all production facilities audited, we use recycled sewing threads, reduce plastic wherever possible, use recycled, FSC-certified cardboard and even use sustainable adhesive tape. All of this goes into the certificate.
Are there efforts in the shoe industry to have their own seal?
I haven’t heard of that yet, but we have set ourselves the highest standards in the Legero United brand association as part of the Legero United sustainability agenda.
What proportion of the overall collection do the shoes certified with the Blue Angel have?
At Think! 40 models have been certified so far. And every season between four and six new variants with the Blue Angel are added. However, other models would also meet the criteria, but we do not have every single color variant certified because that would be too time-consuming for us. Certification is so time-consuming because shoes contain an incredible number of different materials.
Why is so little known about sustainable shoes? The textile industry is much more communicative…
We’ve always worked with sustainability, but unfortunately we don’t have the same marketing budgets as the fashion and textile brands. This has always been a key difference between the shoe and fashion industries! This can give the impression that less is happening in the shoe industry, which is not true.
How can you get even better, what goals do you have to become even more sustainable?
The main problem is the prices. Sustainability doesn’t exactly make a product cheaper. Regionality is also a challenge because it’s not getting any easier to source the materials here. We are part of the Legero United Group and are pursuing the goal of achieving CO2 neutrality down to the product level by 2030. Leather is of course the biggest cause of CO2 here.
What do you think of vegan leather or recycled leather?
First of all: The positive thing about leather is that animals are not bred to make leather as long as meat is eaten. Leather is a by-product of the meat industry. Especially with a view to a circular economy, nothing would be worse than throwing away animal skins instead of processing them.
What are your thoughts on recycled leather?
What I am currently still failing at is the tanning. These leathers are not chrome-free because everything is thrown together here. I will also not import cactus leather from South America, which I don’t think is a better alternative to real leather from Europe. In my opinion, shoes made of vegan leather, and that means made of plastic, do not yet make sense from the point of view of breathability, flexibility, longevity and thus also sustainability and health.
Where do you get your leather from?
Our leather comes mainly from Italy and also from Germany. The soles come mainly from Italy and Spain. We work with production partners who work almost exclusively for Think! to produce. These are located in Italy, Bosnia, Romania and Hungary. At the Heading location, we still make our own prototypes and also offer a repair service. Repairability is already considered in the design, that is part of the sustainable philosophy, and is also very much in demand. We repair around 1,000 pairs of shoes a year.
How do you deal with the question of what happens to the shoes at the end of their life cycle? Can you recycle your shoes?
This is an incredibly complex subject. The fact is that so far there is no solution for shoe recycling. Recycling works best with single-origin products, and that just doesn’t work with leather shoes. As far as we know, there is currently no solution. But what we can influence: According to the waste ordinance, broken shoes should be disposed of with household waste, which means that around 80 to 90 percent of the shoes end up in incineration. If that’s the case, then at least no pollutants should be produced when it is burned. And we always keep that in mind, starting with the design and when selecting the materials.
Think! is mainly sold in the DACH region, but also in the Benelux countries, Scandinavia and other EU countries, as well as in Japan, USA, Canada and South Africa. Think! does not operate its own stationary shops, but there are 16 partner stores in Germany and two in Austria.