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Men’s Wool Piper Mids $120 allbirds.com
TRENDLINES
High-flying Allbirds Celebs, consumers and investors are flocking to Allbirds, a footwear unicorn made from sheep By Mike Reddy
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efore Allbirds appeared on the Nasdaq, its shoes appeared on the feet of Paul McCartney, Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Lawrence and former President Barack Obama, to name just a handful of its celebrity clientele. But as the company’s footwear grows more common, its business model remains anything but. The customers who sport any of the more than eight million pairs of Allbirds shoes sold since their 2016 debut probably didn’t discover them through advertising, and they definitely didn’t stumble upon them in
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chain shoe stores. That’s because at least 60% of the company’s business is driven by word-of-mouth marketing, according to Footwear News. And if that weren’t contrarian enough, Allbirds was launched with a direct-to-consumer sales model powered by e-commerce—something virtually unheard of for brands whose products depend on perfect fits. Since then, the company has built a brick-and-mortar presence, opening its first stores in 2017. From its headquarters in San Francisco to locations in Tokyo, Allbirds now has
Leonardo DiCaprio
Barack Obama
35 stores scattered across the world. That said, with roughly 89% of its revenue coming from internet sales last year, Allbirds’ primary customer base irrefutably remains where it started: online. For what’s now a multi-billion-dollar footwear industry disruptor that defies all expectations, it’s only fitting that the Allbirds origin story is comparably unconventional. If it weren’t for 970 backers on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, the shoe brand might never have taken off. New Zealander Tim Brown, a former professional soccer player and the co-founder of Allbirds, launched the pivotal Kickstarter campaign in early 2014 with the goal of creating natural, anti-bacterial and anti-odor wool shoes. The idea was to make them with merino wool, an especially fine and soft type of wool said to be stronger— yet feel lighter—than cotton. The campaign was aptly named “The Wool Runners: No Socks. No Smell.” With a $30,000 funding goal, the project raised over $100,000 after just five days.
Jennifer Lawrence
Matthew McConaughey
Luckbox | January / February 2022
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12/17/21 2:10 PM
