Watch the interview to learn a bit more about the current trends of the footwear industry according to the views of Juan De La Peña from footwear brand El Naturalista: https://vimeo.com/347038660
The WorldFootwear.com had a conversation with Juan De La Peña from El Naturalista, a Spanish-based brand focused on producing shoes bearing in mind the concept of sustainability and the different arenas of this topic. With the motto “Trying a better way” the brand is committed on doing differently and always trying to do better. We took the opportunity to discuss the main trends of the footwear industry with Juan and bring you the highlights of that conversation today.

Today’s business model

The business model as we know today is collapsing. Not only from the planet point of view, with the ocean full of plastics and chemicals and the weather constantly changing, but also from the business model point of view, we need to be more sustainable, we need to adapt our production to the demand and we need to make our communities sustainable.

Sustainability

We need to create employment for the regions, we need to make progress to our own countries, and we need to try to produce as close as possible to the consumer.

Social media and the consumer

The advantage of the internet and the social media is that small companies can become big companies and big companies, if they are not transparent and tell the true, they can disappear. Actually, the field of opportunities for new people coming to the footwear industry is magnificent. And I believe consumers will look, more and more, for transparency, buy the stories, buy the practices and when they get deep into the brand they will be more loyal than they are today.

The shoe of the future

The shoe of the future is probably not very different from the shoe of today. The difference is going to be what is before and after we use the product. The shoe of the future will probably be made of materials that were something else before and probably when we stop using the product we can recycle and re-use it into something else.

The key to success

We need to predict trends very fast and we need to make the production as short as possible, to have a business model that is a little bit on demand. Today, the retail environment is very competitive, so you don’t have room for mistakes when you are a buyer. So, you need to make sure you can rely on a supplier that can produce more shoes when they sell.

The importance of storytelling

Nowadays we have too much information from many sources and the consumer is not dedicating enough time to the story. They are just photographing and taking little scans of the stories. If we provide good stories full of transparency, with innovative materials and full of stories consumers will get into it and they will get loyal.