Episode 271: Plant-Based Streetwear with Eric Liedtke, Unless Collective

So tell us a little bit about Unless. Unless makes plant based streetwear designed to leave zero plastic waste, totally compostable streetwear. Since our audience is comprised of merch people, people who understand merch makers, manufacturers, agencies, can you share the material structure of one of your garments that makes this even possible?

Thanks for the question, Bobby. I mean, people sometimes scratch your head, well, what do you mean compostable? It's like, well, if you make things out of plants and minerals, that will harmlessly go away. That's what we mean. So everything we make is just really being focused on what are the ingredients that are going in, but more importantly, what happens to those ingredients when you're done using it. And I don't mean like repairing, reselling, you know, recycling and all the things you should be doing before. But I'm saying like when your garment, when this crew goes away at the end of its usable life, what happens to it? And there's not a lot of companies that ask that question. In fact, I haven't found another one that asked that question. So we asked that question as industry insiders and we were not happy with most of the stuff that we had been making for years, basically made out of petroleum based feedstocks, oil, if you will, versions of oil called plastics, and polyesters and nylons that never really go away. And we wanted to make something better. So all of our stuff is made from natural ingredients. And right now our recipe is 100% plants and minerals. That takes different shapes. So a simple French terry like I'm wearing right here is, you know, pretty much 100% cotton. Now what you have to pay attention to is how do you do the, the neck, how do you do the neck label, how do you do the, the cuffs, how do you put it together, what's the dyes you use, what's the inks you use, what's the embroidery embellishment to use? I mean, it's all those little details that the FTC doesn't care about. When you say 100% cotton, they allow just the base material to count. So they allow a garment that's mainly 85% cotton can be called 100% cotton because they don't care about the trimmings and finishes. So that's, we hold ourselves to high responsibility. So knits, cotton, wovens, primarily cotton, maybe with some closures like corozo nuts. Again, threads that are lyocell based, whether it be from, from some sort of cellulose plant based feedstock. Again, same, same diligence on the dyes and inks shoe is completely different matter. That, that's, that was, that was the groundbreaker for us and I'm happy to say today we were a finalist for Fast Companies awards that were given out for game changing innovations for the year of 23. So very excited about that. That just came out today.

Congratulations.

Thank you. I mean it was a, it was a, it was a labor of love, that's for sure. But typically a shoe is made of nine different materials and usually those nine different materials are some sort of animal material like a, like a, like a treated leather or worse in my mind petroleum based product which is a polyurethane, a eva, a synthetic, a nylon, a polyester, you name it. One of these fancy names that all go back to the same place of oil and they basically put those together through a really impenetrable adhesive petrochemical glue. We had to decouple all that and say okay, we have to find the plant based leathers that would be 100% plant based and mineral based and not, not adding in like polyurethane as a filler which many of the plant based do. So we found one through a partnership with Natural Fiber Welding in Peoria, Illinois. We had to find you know, the canvases that were not treated again with glues or chemicals to, to make them more rigid and more durable. We had to find a midsole ingredient and an outsole compound that was all plant mineral based and not. There's never been a midsole foam that I'm aware of that's never been made of anything but polyester or sorry, petroleum based product. Ours is 100 plants and minerals and, and we were able to do that with again this robust partnership with Natural Fiber Welding in Illinois. They were able to provide the tech solutions, the innovations and we were able to put it together in a way for our product. But every little detail even I always like to tell people, even down to the lace tip called the aglet which is usually coated in a little plastic. Not good enough for us. We did a cross stitch, a cellulose based cross stitch. So it was, it was fun. Glad to have in the market, glad to get some recognition. But it's only the beginning.

The degenerate is the shoe that Eric is referring to, which is a phenomenal product. It is getting all kinds of accolades. This is have been the thing with that fast company was a trigger with fast company.

Yeah, that's the, that's the shoe that won the award. It's only there. We only have one shoe, one at its right.

It's fantastic. We'll link obviously to all of this on how I built this cast. You use the term green wishing and not greenwashing. And does this have to do with, like, we think we're dealing with 100% recyclable or 100% of sustainable product? And all of these embellishments you, you just talk about was quite an education to me.

Yeah.

And that's where. Explain greenwash. Wishing versus greenwashing.

Well, first of all, I think greenwashing is a very negative term. If you, if you, if you call somebody a greenwasher, you're pointing your finger right in their face, you say you're a liar. And I think that's very, very strong, strong use of the word. And I think it's appropriate in some situations, like, let's. Let's be honest. But then I think there's. There's the vast majority of the world that somehow thinks they're doing enough, but isn't doing enough. And I'll put. I'll point directly at myself. I, for years, was a green wisher at Adidas. I sat on the board. I was the president of Adidas brand. I ran all creation. I put us on the path to being more sustainable with picking a fight with ocean plastic and then plastic in general. And I was like, okay, we're on a path to transitioning from all virgin polyester feedstock to recycled polyester feedstock. And I was like, all right, that is our holy grail, and we're going to do that. And I was very proud of it and still am to this day. And I don't cast dispersion, but I will say that I thought that was enough. And when you certainly hear and see the degradation of the planet and the speed of which the urgency, which is what we need to act to change the trajectory that we're on, Moving from virgin feedstock to recycle feedstock just isn't enough. It's a baby step. It's a. It's akin to car companies going from, you know, gas cars to hybrid cars, knowing that there's electric out there, there's. They didn't want to do the whole Monty, so, so recycle. It's kind of like that hybrid area of, Of, Of, Of. Of fashion. That's the analogy I would always use where I think, you know, what we've tried to do with unless. And one of the reasons I left is to say, okay, let's get out of the green wishing mode and get into really creating disruption with innovations that show a better way from, you know, from going 100% and not just kind of like this half step.

Yeah. So speaking of that, how did your work with Adidas, such as your partnership was the parlay, the oceans. You could say that green wishing is sort of a step in the right direction. When you break it down and say somebody who has the ambition to do something and then you get educated in the process and realize, oh, there's a bigger solution or a bigger challenge that we need to resolve here.

Yeah, listen, again, I tried to very hard not to, not to throw judgment around. I think that's a terrible way to look at. I think we all have a role to play and it's going to take all of us to participate and especially, especially your listeners that are probably more progressive and wanting to make change to an industry that's kind of been stuck in its own status quo, like all industries are. So to me, it's a sequencing. Right. So if all you can do is move 10% of your stuff from virgin to recycled, great. That's all Adidas did. When I set the goal of getting off to off of 100% virgin to 100% poly, 100% recycled, it had to be a trajectory over the course of 10 years. I think the goal, I laid it out there probably in 2016, the finish line was 2024, because I had fiduciary responsibilities, because I had to recognize that we couldn't just go from one to the other overnight. We had to go step by step by step and make sure that we could take bites of the elephant that were digestible by the overall profit margins that were required from the financial wing of the company. And I think that's just being responsible in a publicly trade company. For me, as I started to hear and see the, the plight of things, I wanted to be a little bit more personally invested in just total disruption. And that's when I realized I needed to step outside of Adidas and try to bring this in from the outside in so that I could, I could work with like minded people, like minded innovators to use my expertise of all the years I had 26 years at ADI to try to, you know, doing things from a material science standpoint, from a consumer behavior standpoint, et cetera, to really apply that towards leading the charge for the industry to be, you know, to get into a better place. So it was. I'm not, I'm certainly not, I'm very proud of what I did at Adidas and I'm certainly not you know, sitting here throwing judgment back at them for what I did, nor at myself. I'm just simply saying I wasn't doing enough. That I think needs to be done and I think that can be green. Wishing is just like we think we're doing enough. But ultimately there needs to be people like myself that decide to do a lot more and be much more radical to set a higher bar for us as, as a general population. Yeah.

You chose not to sell through larger brand partners, even though your own experience and your contact base must have afforded many opportunities for doing so. So the unless collected plant brand which we'll link to is brilliant branding. I just absolutely love it. Fell in love with the brand. The whole, the whole vibe of the brand has an incredible energy to it. Why did you choose the independent D2C route?

It was really just a start. I think as brand people will understand. I mean, I think you've got to have a compelling proposition, you've got to have the product, but you also have to be able to tell the story. And we wanted to make sure that our story is about regeneration. Right. It's about regenerative fashion. It's not an easy story to tell. And so if you just put me on a wall with a bunch of other brands that are screaming sustainability, it's a very noisy wall because everybody's screaming sustainability. Everybody knows the consumer care, everybody's got a different point of view. But ours is unique because ours 100% goes away and creates, you know, good dirt, if you will. And so all of this stuff comes from good dirt and goes back to being good dirt. And so we don't pollute where, you know, if I'm sitting next to Adidas and Adidas is talking about ocean plastic with parley for the oceans, that's also a great story. But you know, the consumer is going to get confused on which one might be better. And I'm not here to, you know, I think they both need space to breathe. So I think it's important to in the early days to have that differentiated retail experience where the consumer can really spend some time and as you've done clearly on our site, and fall in love with the brand, fall in love with the mission driven values of the brand and become a conscious consumer around that. And then, then and only then I think you can start to expand into differentiated retail opportunities.

You are one of the most respected CMOs in any business, in any market. And I'm curious what you saw happening in the marketplace with today's consumer that made you feel like right now was the right time for unless. What was the distinction between in the consumer that you saw that made unless the right time to do this?

Well, first of all, I appreciate the kind words. I hope I can live up to them. But listen, I think I know this industry, the fashion industry, really well. It's a $3 trillion industry on an annual BAS. If you just do a simple x and Y axis chart and you say, okay, on one axis you've got fashionable product and on the other axis you've got sustainable product. You've got a lot of brands that are trying to be a lot of great brands that maybe have a sustainable collection, but it's not really sustainable. To our point earlier, it's kind of like a green wishing sustainable. It might be a RPET or recycled polyester, it might be biofabrication, but it's usually a capsule collection at best. It might, it might have some sort of circularity in it. I think there's a lot of words floating around. But right now I feel like if you wanted to buy a really good sustainable product, you kind of have to wear that on your forehead. And what I mean by that is you have to kind of compromise your taste. So you don't really have a real sustainable option where you can, where you don't have, where you don't have to compromise your taste for your values or your values for your taste. And again, if I, if I can go back to the car industry, before Tesla came out, if you and I wanted to buy an electric vehicle, you could buy a smart car. And a smart car was, you know, it was fascinating little go kart that, you know, basically, you know, but you, you wore that sustainability right here on your forehead. I am a sustainable person. Look at me. You know, you can all do the same thing where Tesla came out and said, wait a minute, you can have a great looking car that's the fastest car in the Autobahn and it's built on a better stack called an electric vehicle. And it just changed overnight people's conception of what electric vehicles were and what electric vehicles are and what they could be. And now the entire industry is tripping over themselves making electric vehicles. We're doing the same thing. So we're basically saying, listen, everybody thinks that you can make, you have to make stuff out of petroleum based stuff, polyesters, you know, polyurethanes, to make fashion. We're here to say you don't. We've modeled 100 plant based fashion brand that looks really good and has a clear point of view and allows the consumer to have both their, both the values that they want to maintain and their taste without wearing, you know, their, their fair trade label right on their forehead and, and looking like they're, you know, they're, they're, they're only thrifting and things like that. So we, we're trying to meet the consumer where the consumer is today, which is they expect to be able to buy things that are doing less harm or no harm to the world, but they also expect to have the style that they, they, they, they so they so, so much desire. Yeah.

The hoodies, the bucket hats, the flannel, all of it's just so incredible the, you and your team, what you've done with the merchandising.

But we've had, we're having some fun and we've got our, you know, we, we're mastering the, the essential wardrobe at this point.

Yes. Little capsule collection. Would you ever consider co branding?

Unless, I mean we, we, we would collaborate with. That's one of the models we, we built up is we, we. We're building a lighthouse brand for others to follow but for also to, to show others the way. And we do that through inviting them in to collaborate with us, to partner with us and to do, to do different things. And we've done, we've done, we've done a few, we've got a lot more in, in, in in the works that we're excited about because I think we want to expand our audience to other brands audiences but we also want to expand our distribution and let them see the power of our simple story of regeneration and the power that has for creating brand advocacy for each one of those brands that we partner with.

We have a great community member, Bryn Grossman with Swag Cycle. What he does is he partners, he doesn't let swag go to his landfill and he partners with folks that finds charities that need, need have a need and folks that are donating swag. So it's really, really fascinating what's happening in the merch world because a very conscientious buyer and agency coming to the fore. You have an incredible program that I think would be inspiring to a lot of folks. You call it, they call it the take back program. Can you explain that program?

Yeah. First of all, I think swag is really interesting. I think when we set this thing up, we see, you know, blanks as a sustainable blanks or a zero waste blank, if you will, as a real opportunity that's not there right now, but it's, you know, it's all sequencing, right? First you got to build the brand, and then you can start to build the different channels. Take back is pretty simple, right? So everything we make, we 100% guarantee will go harmlessly away into the soil, regardless of what happens to it. So if you put it in your, in your, in your flower bed, you know, in your, at your, at your yard right now, and use it as just, you know, fodder for your plants to grow into, perfect. We've got the soil chemistry testing from University of Georgia and our partnership with Agriman to tell you that that will harmlessly go away regardless of how long it takes based on the environment. So it could be in the, you know, you could do it in the high desert of Oregon. You could do it the rainforest of the Oregon coast. These are places I live. Or you could do it in your own flower garden here in Portland, Oregon. It doesn't matter. It's all going to go away. Just the different. The timing will be different based upon the environment, the moisture, the heat, the dryness, everything else. Now, if you want to send it back to us, we will pay for the POA package. We will give you 20% off on your next purchase, and we will make sure that that garment goes back or that shoe goes back into being good dirt within 30 days. Because we have a partnership with Industrial Composter, the largest one in California called Agriman, that is really partnering with us to, to turn all of our products and textiles in general into good dirt, which leads to a whole nother opportunity. When we talk about, you know, piloting as a potentially certifying textiles in the future on what can be returned to being good dirt and becoming a, a soil, a carbon inset by. By producing good soil out of the products we make.

That's absolutely fascinating. What an incredible business model.

Speaking of, that was not the intention, but that's kind of like one of the outcomes that come along when you, when you go down this, this route of, you know, innovation.

Yeah, it's amazing. The. My favorite employee of yours, by the way, is Dirtbag D. This won't make much sense to folks until they go to the website and look at unless collective but Dirtbag D, who keeps it growing. I loved the Carla Welch interview. I was laughing out loud. It was incredible marketing, incredible branding. Can you explain who Dirtbag D is to our audience, what the show's about?

Appreciate your, your feedback there. It's good because, you know, you take a risk. So let's start with a little context first. You know, we, we unless want to do things really well and we want to go to that holy grail of the fashion industry which is making stuff out of, you know, that harmlessly goes away. End of life. That's, that's the mission we've set apart. So we start with the end. So but to do that you can, you can get yourself in a situation where you become very, you know, luxury. Like you like don't, you shouldn't be doing this. You should be doing this and it can be very, very in your face. And we were very clear we didn't want to be a finger wagging brand from the beginning. We wanted to take all the responsibilities on ourselves. And so we actually on some of our shirts say don't feel bad. You know, that's one of our things. You have to feel bad about buying this. We've done the hard work that everything, everything, everything is as clean as humanly possible. So when we came to like doing some films and things, we tried different areas and different briefs but we really settled on we need a spokesperson. We're a startup. We can't afford a famous person so we can't afford a celebrity influencer endorser. We're like, let's find something that's ultimately we can replicate from time to time with different people we want to put them in front of. But that's also like have some fun, let's have some fun. So the agency and our creative team came up with a puppet and Dirtbag D is basically a Sesame street type of puppet that has a little attitude to him. He's got some tattoos, he's got some, you know, he's got some style. He's, he's interviewing people that are like minded around the space and he's having some fun with him. So Carla's a, you know, very famous stylist from Hollywood. He, he, he, he interviews Alexis, the black forager who loves to go out and you know, eat, eat food from the ground and then has a huge following on TikTok and Instagram. We interviewed Native American name, I call him X because his name's very difficult. But talk about that. And we got Kahi the surfer. So just people that came from different walks of life to had some fun with them and just to kind of spread the word and like you said, keep it growing.

You, I just love it. It's so much fun. And you obviously are sort of you, you have. Folks may not know this but you are behind some of the most famous famous collabs in merch history with Kanye and Farrell and Beyonce with Adidas. And that experience obviously shows itself in something as simple as Dirtbag D. Not simple, but it's brilliant because you're partnering with all these folks, you're interviewing them, they have a reach. You're, you're doing, you plan on doing more collabs. And how do you plan on taking what you learned at a deus through those collaborations and applying that?

Yeah, I think, listen, I think we are the second name in our brand is called collective. So we are absolutely trying to build something with everyone involved. So whether it be our innovators, whether it be our influencers, whether it be our creatives, we bring in people from all sorts of walks of life. So even taking some learnings from working with these macro celebrities, if you are macro artists, we really took, were very conscious to say let's go from the ground up this time and let's, let's go out and work with artists that are very local, that are unknown. They're looking for a platform that they can, they can build on. And so all the collaborations we've done to date from an artist standpoint have been very local, very, very, you know, around like, you know, our first drop was with a tattoo artist from Portland, a Michelin trained chef, a streetwear guy and, and a graphic designer and just very Portland vibe that we could like, you know, elevate and, and really, really, you know, say, hey, we're Portland proud. We want to celebrate Portland. And then we started to broaden from there. Now we've done some collaborations with artists from all over Oregon and now we're talking about, you know, the next step of doing something with artists in, in LA or different areas, but really keeping it more in the local. I'm a believer that yes, while the Kanye's and Beyonce and Froze and such had a, had a point in a moment in time and they will always have a moment in time of that magnitude. I think when you're building a brand from the ground up, you gotta really, you know, build it with its own stake, if you will. And it needs to stand on its own legs. And so you've got to build it with its own credibility, authenticity, cultural insights that are relevant for it. So there'll be more of those to come for sure. And we are talking to some bigger names now as we start to grow. But it's right now it's been really rewarding, kind of giving the, the microphone to those lesser known.

It's phenomenal. You, let's talk, let's wrap up with a Little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. On how I built this, you said the best advice you ever received was from Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer. Am I pronouncing that right? Donat Hyman. Thank you. Don't ask for permission, just ask for my advice. How did that shape your role at Adidas? How did that shape you today?

Oh, to me, I give that advice all the time and I use that line all the time because Herbert was brave enough to put the first American ever to the brand president role at Adidas. He was brave enough to hand the keys over to me and he was very brave enough to say, do what you got to do. I mean, he trusted me at that point, to the point where it's like he showed it by saying, don't ask for my permission, ask for my advice. And that's a hell of a. You're turning over the keys to your brand, your global brand to, I don't know, 45 year old. You know, guys, that, that was, was two positions down at the time and saying, I trust you get to get to it. And that just showed that just, he empowered me. He more than that, he gave me confidence in myself. And you know, I think it was a, was a, was a, it was a big calculated risk on his part that I think, you know, happily had a good ending.

Who are the brands that you are inspired by today and who are the upstarts that you're watching?

Yeah, I think that's a good one because I'm inspired by brands that are turning their attention to trying to solve some of the big problems we have in the world today. And unfortunately there's not a whole lot of them. It's like I wish there were more that were leaning in, but there's always going to be. The Apple doesn't make a bad product. Right. So you love Apple because they make a good product. And if you see like when they come out with Apple Streaming and Apple Payments plus, it's like, my God, I go to the, I go to their stream channel all the time first because they don't make a bad product. Now whether I like the show or that's different, but you know, it's going to be quality. It's never going to be something that's been half, half baked. And so they continue to just come out with that. I've been a Disney guy forever. I love the fact that Michael, Michael Eisner's back there. He's a, he's a, I've been following his journey for a long time. You know, Because I believe he, he brought zizzing back and now he's, he's doing it again. Oh, it's not, it's Bob Iger. Sorry, it's not. Yeah. Anyway, you get my point.

Yes, I do.

Yeah. Disney is fantastic in what they're doing and he's making some hard decisions, but he's coming back in to reset it. Howard Schultz. So it's kind of like guys I've been following for a while, Howard Schultz. I was a big Elon fan until the Twitter thing and now it's like, okay, not so much there, but it's hard not to love what he's doing with SpaceX and just watching that rocket land on a pad. Yeah, yeah. Stuff that gets me excited from a product standpoint. I wish more brands were leading with their, with their hearts though, and recognizing that we have to get off of the make, take and throw away culture of, you know, capitalism and really leaning in and trying to do something as a difference maker in, in what we're trying to do with unless. So I'm looking for more of those like minded souls. They're out there, but they're, they're, they're really small and the startup community is very passionate about making the change we all need to see in the world.

There are so many folks listening to this right now that needed to hear your message, want to hear your message and they want to shape the world through their craft themselves. There are suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and agencies. As we talked about before we hit record. How would you encourage them to do exactly what you just said and maybe a way of phrasing that is what would you say to the Eric at the beginning of this journey with unless collective to encourage him to keep going?

Yeah. So I would say three things. Be super clear about the destination. Have a, have a really clear thesis. Like ours was, you know, zero harmful waste to end of life. That's, that's, that's what we said. We're going to fix fashion by focusing on the problem of waste. And so being very specific. We don't even talk about sustainability. We talk about that. Second thing is stay small as long as you can until you really prove it. I mean, you got to, you got to really look at your resource burn before you even have resources to burn. Like how it's always good to have more collaborators because it makes you feel comfortable, but it can come back to bite you later on if you're not watching your resource burn even before you start. And the third thing is when you get some resources, some capital. Cherish it. I've gone through a couple master classes of this already, so it's really. Be very careful with it. So it's like, have the idea, make sure you're doing it with the right people and not too many, and then, boom. Make sure you're watching that bottom line and then go like hell.

Thank you, Eric. Thank you for joining us and inspiring us with your mission. And we can't wait to talk to you again sometime. Appreciate you joining us. Great.

Thanks for having me. Take care, Bobby.