4 minute read
Trailblazer Anna & Christine Tarrago
ANNA & CHRISTINE TARRAGO
FOUNDERS ALFENA FOOTWEAR
Anna and Christina Tarrago are the mother-daughter duo behind Alfena footwear and the revolutionary Kira No.1, designed from scratch to be fully circular, sustainable, biodegradable and on trend for every occasion
Big companies tend to get our big headlines, but sometimes the story of a small company is big enough to hold meaning for a whole industry.
Anna and Christine Tarrago, the mother and daughter behind Alfena
Footwear, have built out a completely visible and sustainable supply chain, with partners at every tier adhering to the same principles as them, embedding social value along the chain, and using exclusively reusable and sustainably sourced materials, they have produced a shoe fulfilling every conceivable sustainability, circular, and regenerative criteria. And they did it all for €20,000 (US$22,000), a multi-year spend rapidly being outpaced in the first two months of sales that, annualised, would mean a pre-marketing profit for the first year on the market.
Alfena’s achievement is impressive, but not, obviously, comparable to Nike or Adidas making the same sort of change. Making even minor changes at that level is a huge and incredibly tough job, but Alfena’s story is remarkable all the same. This is trailblazing work, informed by a shared dedication to sustainable business objectives - A point every major corporation understands when it comes to driving change in this decade.
How a shared passion made the Kira No.1
“If you're going to the gym, you need a certain pair of shoes. If you're running, you need a certain pair of shoes and I'm not going to wear my gym shoes. When I'm going out to dinner, I'm not going to wear my running shoes when I go to a bar,” says Anna, who grew up between Europe and the US and is now finishing her studies at the German Sports University of Cologne. “One thing led to another, and then we realised all these shoes, they're creating so much pollution - and this is plastic pollution. It's all part of the fast fashion industry: plastic chemicals, toxins - we always end up with more in our environment. That’s how Alfena started.”
The shoe itself - the Kira No.1 - is designed to be universal. This means it is unisex, but can be used for going out, day-to-day activities, even for sport and exercise. The price tag of €249 marks it out as a luxury item, but reflects its multifaceted utility and extended lifecycle. The sleek, platformed, white design fits with prevailing trends across shoe fashion from sport to eveningwear. Alfena plans to release more models in the future.
For Anna’s mother, Christine, sustainability has been core to her life and upbringing. These are values she sought to raise her daughter with. Now based in the US, this journey, too, began in Germany.
“Since my very early childhood, we worked on sustainability. We cleaned up our kindergartens and at lunch break in schools, we had to pick up our trash, and every class rotated,” Christine says. “Sustainability was always dear to my mind and heart, so wherever I lived, I guess that's how I raised Anna, that we have to be sustainable.”
Following Anna’s prompt, Christine began to research the shoe industry.
“The numbers were just speaking for themselves,” says Christine, who has 25+ years of experience in global business. “When I saw 15 to 20 billion shoes end up thrown out annually, globally, as well as the circumstances in which they are produced, that was a big concern.
“I could see in my mind also these landfills, where everything ends up, and how that could leak into the groundwater. That’s how it came together.”
The pair began to research. Without external support they found suppliers of natural materials that would biodegrade, then taught themselves about how shows are built and went out looking for supply chain partners to bring it all together.
And so they did, in Portugal, Austria, Germany, France and beyond. The shoe came together, made of cork, Tencel (derived from wood fibre), Rhabarbleder (from rhubarb
biomass), and Lactae Hevea, derived from Latex bought from wholesalers in Asia and elsewhere. The leather? Well, while it's the animal-derived kind, it's sustainably sourced from small German farms and vegetable tanned - a process that produces no toxins.
With a production process in place, the time came for a prototype. That became the Kira No.1.
“We want to show you do not have to compromise style, quality, or comfort to be sustainable,” says Anna. “You can wear shoes that look good and still do good for the environment. That was our mission and we accomplished this by picking out materials that are natural and as biodegradable as possible to give back to Mother Nature
“You can see it as borrowing mother nature's materials, making a product out of it. At the end of its lifecycle, it goes back to nature.”
