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I'm sorry to use the D-word in the very first sentence of a story about a digitally native direct-to-consumer company, but we are living in the age of sneaker disruption. The process is happening all around us: Resale site StockX is asking us to treat shoes like stocks and occasionally releasing them IPO-style. One of the most ubiquitous sneakers in the world is made from furry wool and can be popped in the wash every couple of months. Investors and corporations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars investing in platforms, like Goat, Grailed, and Stadium Goods, that promise to revolutionize the secondary market. Everlane, having already disrupted traditional retail and the idea of overpaying for T-shirts, wants in on the action, and has a simple idea for even more world domination: what if we made a sustainable shoe so durable, so comfortable, and so cool that people stop cycling through sneakers and just buy this one?
Everlane, the massively popular nine-years-old basics brand, made its name by putting everyone onto the direct-to-consumer model (and spawning a million Everlane-for-X companies in the process). Now, it's launching a sneaker brand. That last word, brand, is important: Everlane isn’t putting sneakers out under its main umbrella, but creating a whole new thing called Tread by Everlane, starting with a sneaker—the Trainer, retailing for $98—that launches April 25th. Same direct-to-consumer model, same commitment to sustainability, different social media and branding. Part of that is because, as CEO Michael Preysman tells me, Everlane’s Instagram following leans heavily female—he’d like to wipe the slate clean and try to get back to unisex. The other reason is that Preysman just believes this is a huge freaking deal. “This isn't just another launch for Everlane,” says Preysman. “It's a whole concept and idea.”
And it’s quite the surprise. Like the physical retail shops now open in New York (“Everlane Prince”) and San Francisco (“Everlane Valencia”)—Preysman once said, “We are going to shut the company down before we go to physical retail”—sneakers were another item on the CEO’s over-my-dead-body list. So what changed?
For Preysman, it came down to what he feels is a gap in the market (no trainers, lots of Common Projects-y options) mixed with a glut in the market (too many disposable shoes).
Sneakers, as the Tread press release reads, are the most hyped items in the world. That popularity concerns Preysman. Brands churn through trending styles, turning once must-have shoes into landfill fodder in the span of months. The way Everlane sees it, fashion brands create “It” shoes, fast-fashion brands rush to knock them off, and the planet suffers when that cycle resets. And because of all the different components that go into making them, Preysman says, sneakers are one of the most impossible apparel items to properly recycle.
Tread by Everlane fits in with the brand’s long-standing goal of eradicating plastic from its supply chain: the Trainer, is 94.2% plastic-free. But Preysman understands that’s all for naught if the shoe doesn’t look cool. “It's not like Tesla introduces a sustainable car and it's ugly, and shitty, and barely moves,” says Preysman. “They're like, ‘Hey, actually, we have to give you a sustainable car, that's electric powered, that's better than what's out there today.’”
The hurdle, says Everlane’s head of footwear and accessories Alison Melville, was creating something with broad appeal that wasn’t totally absent of any of the design qualities that actually make customers want to buy sneakers. “The Everlane challenge is that we want things that are timeless and classic, and we also want things that are distinctive and recognizable and have a point of view,” Melville says.
The Trainer comes in all the muted colors of the crayon box no child has ever wanted to play with: “Off White” (off white), “Glacier” (grey), “Grey” (brownish-grey), “Navy” (navy), “Butter” (golden-brown, like a croissant), “Pale Pink” (white with a dash of pink), and “Black” (black). The shoe itself, with its two-tiered outsole and small panel running along the back of the heel, shares some resemblance with the New Balance 574. But Everlane has plenty of design touches all its own: the toothy sole, the perforated section on the side of the upper, the typically mesh section on the toe box that's classed up in leather or suede, depending on the colorway. It’s like Everlane took all the parts it liked about retro running shoes and smashed them into one sneaker.
Preysman knows there's a catch: weaning the world off disposable sneakers isn’t a problem tech alone can solve. Making a shoe that’s 94.2 % plastic-free is great, but meaningless if no one wants to buy it. “If you attempt to disconnect [sustainability and design], you do a disservice to each,” says Preysman. Tread can only fulfill its goal by designing a shoe that’s both so cool and so timeless that people will want to wear it now and long into the future. Most brands dedicate everything they have to just figuring that out, without worrying too much about the virtuous items at the top of Everlane’s list.
Tread’s goal is to make a shoe worthy of attention and then Trojan Horse the sustainability bit into the conversation. “When we're out there, we're not saying, ‘Oh, it's sustainable so you have to pay $200 for it,’” says Preysman. “We're not saying ‘It's sustainable, so it's ugly.’ We're not saying ‘It’s sustainable so it wears down fast.’ We're saying, ‘Hey, it's sustainable, and it's affordable, and it looks good, and it's not gonna wear down.’ The idea of trade-offs feels like you're basically setting sustainability up for failure.”
All of which means that Everlane’s new sneaker brand is actually doing the most disruptive thing possible in our current sneaker-crazy reality: proposing that maybe you don’t buy quite so many shoes. Stop logging in on Saturday mornings for the latest and greatest sneaker, don’t make the monthly trips to Flight Club, and catch yourself ping-ponging from one trend to the next. But only after, of course, you buy a new pair from Tread by Everlane.
