Koio's Johannes Quodt Is Rethinking His Footwear Brand With Help From Farmers in the Alps
The co-founder explains how he's incorporating regenerative farming into his buzzy shoes.
When we talk about clothing waste, often, it's the t-shirts and jeans that get the most attention. Piles and piles of worn-once merch tees lining deserts in Chile or equal sized heaps of denim laying behind street vendors in Accra are the first things that come to mind. But what about the shoes? From production to landfill, they are often left out of the conversation. You hold onto them longer, you wear them until the soles are run down and you get a little ache in your knee that tells you it's time to let them go.
The problem is that while there may be less quantity of shoe waste per year – shoes are only about 11% of fashion consumption per year, so less turnover makes sense – they are incredibly toxic to make and difficult to break down. “Any shoe is made of hundreds of components that are bonded together, so it's extremely hard to recycle a shoe,” Johannes Quodt, founder and CEO of Koio explained to me in a Zoom call a few weeks ago. Upon first glance, Quodt’s brand is simple and practical, offering luxurious looking Chelsea boots and loafers alongside monochromatic leather sneakers for everyday wear. They are beautiful and wearable, but more than that, they are thoughtful – made using regenerative leather from the Alpine region of Surselva, Switzerland.
Regenerative farming is one of those sustainability buzzwords that's easy to look past as some greenwashing claim, but in reality, it's been around for centuries, specifically with indigenous communities. The idea is a holistic approach to farming by minimizing soil disturbances and using animals – like cows – to decrease the need for fertilizer. For Quodt, working with these farms and using the hides that would have otherwise gone to waste into his leather shoes has been another way to improve his mission of making great, luxury shoes with a complete life cycle.
“These are all animals that are part of this very traditional Swiss approach of having cows up in the Alps, on pastures, and managing the Alpine ecosystem, he explained. “What these cows do specifically is, they graze the pastures on the Alps and thereby make the pastures remain in the state they used to be in traditionally. Their most important impact is that they help prevent over-forestation.” The cow hides, which would usually be burned or sent to a landfill, are then sent to a tannery in Germany that can work with non-industrial hides and use non-toxic ingredients to tan the leather. Then the material is shipped to Italy, where the manufacturer uses centuries-old techniques to make the shoes.
The most interesting part about this is that none of it is new. All of these processes have been available and used for generations, but industrialization and, in effect, capitalism, has pushed them out of the mainstream and into the corners of sustainability.
“Regenerative farming is a very sensible, very reasonable, and holistic path to making agriculture — and therefore so many aspects of our lives — more sustainable,” Quodt says. But he realizes that it's a process, and a long one that he is not trying to keep proprietary. He wants brands and farms to see that this is an option so that it grows. “If the demand increases, we will be able to play a small role in making this also more attractive for farmers to think about regenerative agriculture.”
Before we end the call, I did have one sort of elephant in the room question: vegan leather. I’m a vegan and that has fallen prey to the myth that vegan leather is a more sustainable option, and it makes sense why. Animal rights are an important part of the fashion conversation. Vegan leather, though, is typically made from plastic. It’s not easily recycled, and it's not helping the planet. What I appreciate about this regenerative form of leather-making is that it [ensures] the cow is not wasted. “I think the reason why [vegan leather] is so popular right now is because what everybody sees now is that the current way of farming, especially meat and dairy farming, is not sustainable. And we fully agree. It's terrible what's happening in feedlots,” Quodt says. “And we don't want to accept this any second longer. The problem is just that these vegan solutions just are not systemic solutions. They're incremental to the current system.”
The Capri Regenerative will retail for $328 and will be available in both men’s and women’s sizes on koio.co in January.