Loafers with radical transparency
Footwear brands Sebago and NN.07 have teamed up with Spoor to make a special, traceable version of the Classic Dan loafer.
Copenhagen-based footwear brand NN.07 has used traceable Scandinavian leather in a joint project with Sebago, a limited-edition, hand-sewn version of the US brand’s Classic Dan loafer. In keeping with NN.07’s brand name, the shoes went on sale at selected retailers on November 7.
The partners teamed up with supplier of semi-processed, traceable hides Spoor for the project. Spoor’s systems provide documented traceability data for each hide, covering the journey from, in this case, the farms in Sweden that raised the cattle to the tanneries in Denmark and Germany that made semi-finished and then finished leather from the material. Both of the tanneries involved have gold-level certification from multi-stakeholder body the Leather Working Group.
Responsibly sourced
Sebago and NN.07 have called the resulting shoe collection “a radically transparent and uncompromising loafer [with] the ability to trace each piece of leather back to its origin”. Head of special projects at NN.07, Mikkel Hammershøj, says the brands’ aim was to create a shoe that could serve “as a testament to the exceptional quality of traceable leather and bring attention to the technology behind responsibly sourced materials”.
He adds: “Quality isn’t just about durability and the tactile experience; it also extends to how the material is sourced and produced, about the responsible and ethical journey of how it is made.”
Spoor’s business development director, Birgitte Holgaard, explains that the Swedish provenance of the hides provided the two shoe companies with guarantees of high quality and high levels of animal and environmental care. She adds that Spoor was “very pleased to be part of the very first loafers in the world made from traceable Scandi leather”.
Clear narrative
Production of the capsule collection took place in Mexico, at a factory that is an established component of the Sebago manufacturing set-up. This factory already produces the Classic Dan loafer for Sebago’s mainstream collections and, therefore, had all the necessary tooling in place for this initiative. For this special project, though, only 300 pairs of the shoes went on sale and, with the addition of just three extra pairs for promotional campaigns, this was the extent of the production run.
Asked if the traceability system makes it possible to determine the specific origin of the leather in each individual pair of loafers, Mikkel Hammershøj tells World Footwear that this was not the focus of the project. What the partners wanted, he explains, was to have a clear narrative about the traceability and the high quality of the leather, and to communicate a clear message about this for the whole capsule collection. To source leather for 303 pairs of loafers, 19 hides were enough. To be able to affirm that all 19 of those hides came from animals raised in Sweden on farms with high standards of care and welfare and were then carefully processed in high-quality tanneries was enough for Sebago and NN.07 to communicate the message they wanted to share.
Added value
Its work on this project has convinced NN.07 that traceability to the level of an individual pair of its shoes will be possible in future. All it would require would be what Mr Hammershøj calls some extra detail at the shoe factory. This would mean taking the data available from the Spoor traceability system that identifies each hide and putting the relevant information, in the form of a QR code, for example, into each shoe containing pieces of leather processed from each of the hides.
“We also need to figure out if a direct link from the shoe to a specific animal provides more added value for the customer than, say the documentation and communication we used this time,” the head of special projects says. He adds that this launch and NN.07’s work with Sebago and traceable Scandinavian leather, has fuelled the Danish brand’s motivation for working on other leather projects in future.
A special version of Sebago’s Classic Dan loafer, produced from traceable Scandinavian leather.
All credits: Sebago
