CONVERSE Has Played The Green Card, Making Shoes With Plastic Bottles, Jeans Or Cotton Canvas.

After returning to the basketball market, CONVERSE has played an environmental protection card.

Recently, CONVERSE announced the launch of the "Renew series", which is made of recyclable garbage. This series of three products, made from recycled plastic bottles, recycled jeans and recycled canvas, is still in use of classic Chuck Taylor All Star and Chuck 70.

In July 5th, Converse Renew Canvas, which was produced by decomposing recycled plastic bottles and then produced polyester fibers, took the lead. In the official flagship store of CONVERSE Taobao, Chuck 70 has 3 colors, priced 569 yuan and 539 yuan respectively according to high and low prices, of which the most popular one is butter and green, and third days after being released, it is sold out. The Chuck Taylor series has introduced 7 colors, ranging from 269 yuan to 439 yuan.

Rhino saw retail sales to the CONVERSE counters in several shopping malls in Beijing. It also found that the Chuck70 avocado premium had been sold out, and the shop assistant said, "it will be out of stock in second days." The fabric of the environmental protection Chuck70 feels slightly harder than the CONVERSE canvas shoes, but the upper foot feels no different from other products, but the sole is thickened, and it is more flexible on the floor.

In the shops of these counters, the environmental shoes are not only sold on the "new product" logo, but also with other new brands. If customers do not ask questions, the clerk will not take the initiative to introduce the situation. "We can basically buy anything that we know." The clerk said.

In 2003, when CONVERSE was bought by Nike for $305 million, it gradually weakened the label of basketball and professional sports, and the main trend was fashion. But in recent years, with the rapid growth of similar products on the market, such as Vans, Puma and other brands, the CONVERSE Chuck Taylor All Star, which relies too much on classic canvas shoes, has seen a decline in performance since 2016.

According to the survey conducted by the data analysis platform EngagementLabs in August last year on 6736 "Z generation" offline conversations, compared to five years ago, the number of people concerned in CONVERSE's youth group dropped by 18% over the same period last year.

In the 2018 fiscal year ending May 31, 2018, CONVERSE's revenue was $1 billion 886 million, down 8% from the same period last year, and the pre tax profit of $310 million, a 35% decrease from the same period last year. In 2019, although CONVERSE's revenue grew 3%, to $1 billion 900 million, its pre tax profit fell 2% to $303 million. It is worth mentioning that in the 2019 fiscal year, CONVERSE's double-digit growth in Asian market revenue, but the European and American market is still bleak, in a state of declining revenue.

In April of this year, CONVERSE released All Star Pro BB and signed Chinese basketball star Abdul Sarah M as spokesperson, thus returning to the basketball market. "CONVERSE is a brand driven and driven by youth culture. It is very important for us to communicate with young people and young culture. When we realize the importance of basketball in the global youth culture, we will seize this opportunity." Matthew Jung, general manager of CONVERSE Asia Pacific, said in an interview with lazy bear sports. "This is an opportunity to connect with new fans and new consumer groups." (reading: return to basketball, can CONVERSE make a comeback?)

For an American brand with a history of more than 100 years, environmental protection is also the flagship label at the very beginning of its establishment. This CONVERSE has made a lot of fuss about classic shoes. It not only continues the usual line of feeling, but also aims at catching the environmental vent which is becoming more and more popular now.

Brandon Avery, vice president of CONVERSE, said in an interview that four years ago, he had invited employees to cut and sewn Chunk Taylor style to their old clothes and old sheets, which turned out to be surprisingly effective. "This shows that people have the ability to change old things, regardless of the difference between the two." Avery said, "the essence of Chuck Taylor is to embrace those elements of life and bring them back to life."

More importantly, Sustainable Fashion is attracting more and more attention and is becoming the strategic focus of all brands.

According to the annual global consumer survey conducted by Accenture Strategy, nearly 2/3 of consumers want a brand product or service to adhere to a consistent position, such as healthy living habits, sustainable resources, and pure handwork. Compared with product design that promotes social progress, it is more attractive. The latest survey by Nosto, an e-commerce service and marketing platform, shows that 73% of respondents want the brand to use recyclable materials.

Before CONVERSE, many sports brands launched environmental shoes: Puma launched a biodegradable and recyclable product mix InCycle in 2013; Adidas launched the sports shoes Adidas Ultraboost Uncaged Parley made of marine plastic waste in 2015; Nike also developed a new type of recycled leather material Flyleather in 2017, and applied it to some shoes.

But from a practical point of view, it is difficult to achieve environmental protection shoes from concept to large-scale market.

First of all, the collection and remanufacture of raw materials provide an obstacle to mass production.

Take CONVERSE's latest three green shoes as an example, the plastic bottle that has been published is one of the easiest to make. This material is not similar to canvas upper. It is not complicated. It only needs to cut, melt and spin the waste plastic bottles, and weave texture and properties of PET which are very similar to canvas.

Jeans, by contrast, are much more complicated. CONVERSE partner BeyondRetro, the British second-hand clothing retailer, is responsible for sorting out recycled jeans and providing raw materials for CONVERSE. These jeans are steam sterilized and butterfly clipping (remove zippers) before they can be sent to the factory. In factories, designers will directly cut out the shoe upper template on jeans, and also need to pay attention to stains and breakages during the cutting process. And the hardness of jeans cloth is different from that of canvas, so cutting is difficult.

The third cotton canvas series is the hardest part. This series is recycled CONVERSE's canvas material discarded in the production process, converted into 40% compound cotton and polyester compound cotton, and new yarn is produced. The series is expected to debut in spring and summer in 2020, but CONVERSE said that the current material is not enough and can not meet the number of CONVERSE's issue.

Secondly, environmental shoes also involve cost control.

Recycling of plastic products is the most important direction of brand development. Although plastics conversion technology is becoming more and more mature, no company can carry out large-scale production. Take Adidas as an example, although Adidas Ultraboost Uncaged Parley has sold over 1 million pairs in fiscal year 2017, it accounts for a small proportion of the sales of sports shoes that are hundreds of millions of pairs every year. Eric Lidtke, head of Adidas global brand, has also said that marine plastic shoes can not digest the cost in a short time.

In addition, there are more and more environmental shoes products on the market. Brand differentiation is becoming more and more difficult. Whether it can really benefit from the market is still unknown. Nosto's survey shows that 52% of consumers want the fashion industry to become more sustainable, but only if 29% of consumers are willing to pay for a single product and charge higher prices in a sustainable way.

Another topic worthy of attention is, are environmental shoes really "green"? Will their materials produce any other pollution during the process of recycling? You know, many sports brands have been given the "red card" by the international Greenpeace organization because of chemical toxic emissions in the production process. Whether the brand is really environment-friendly, it is probably more realistic to compare their annual environmental impact statement.