Sally Rae talks to former All White Tim Brown about his new venture.
Tim Brown might be best known as an All White but his focus now is Allbirds.
The former professional football player has traded football for footwear, launching a shoe company called Allbirds which has produced its first-ever shoe made from superfine New Zealand merino wool.
Having overcome what he thought were ‘‘insurmountable road blocks'' at times, Wool Runners were now available in both New Zealand and the United States, although there was still a long way to go, he said.
It was time to do something else and he headed to London to study at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He never envisaged he would end up making shoes; nor did he grow up on a sheep farm with a passion for wool.
But he always believed New Zealand merino would be a ‘‘phenomenal'' material to use in shoes. ‘‘I just got curious about an industry I stumbled on and followed my nose,'' he said.
Mr Brown launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2014 to produce a test version of the Wool Runners, reaching his target in just four days.
Teaming up with Allbirds co-founder Joey Zwillinger, a biotech engineer and renewable materials expert, was a good move, helping to improve the shoe's construction and introduce additional sustainable materials, including a vegetable-oil-based polyurethane insole.
They have spent more than two years perfecting a textile suitable for shoes using 16micron merino wool.
The textile was woven in Italy by luxury woollen fabric manufacturer Reda, which has supplied fabric to Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Tom Ford and Hugo Boss.
Wool Runners were sneakers and Mr Brown had plans to use natural materials in other Allbirds shoe styles in the future.
His interest was in simple, beautiful designs, using natural materials, and he felt it was a niche in the footwear industry that had not been explored.
‘‘We're ready to start changing the way the world thinks about shoe companies. We have a design philosophy centred on simplicity and the use of innovative natural materials.''
At the performance end of the industry, the likes of sporting giants Nike and Adidas were doing ‘‘amazing stuff'', while fashion was at the other end of the spectrum.
Allbirds was in the middle; creating affordable, functional, simple footwear, bringing a great brand and beautiful design to that category, where there was a ‘‘whole bunch of averageness''.
It was ‘‘stripping everything away'' and focusing on comfort.
What was particularly cool for Mr Brown, as a Kiwi, was working with other New Zealanders throughout the process.
He was proud of being able to connect the dots of a network of ‘‘incredible Kiwi creatives''. It was about building a brand with heart and soul ‘‘coming from where we come from'', he said.
While there were times it all ‘‘got too hard'', the decision to go out and raise some ‘‘proper money'' saw an incredible response.
Allbirds raised more than $US2.7million in an investment round led by New York-based venture capital fund Lerer Hippeau Ventures.
Mr Brown and his American wife moved from London to San Francisco, hired six staff and launched last week.
Already, an article in Time magazine described Wool Runners as the ‘‘world's most comfortable shoes''.
Just a few days since the launch, and the small team was ‘‘running around like crazy'' and it had been a ‘‘pretty amazing'' couple of days, he said.
All brands needed to be thinking about the materials they were using and the footprint they were leaving, he said.
Allbirds might not be doing it all right but they were ‘‘sure as hell trying'' and it was something he felt ‘‘incredibly excited'' about.
‘‘Who knows if it will be successful? Time will tell,'' he said.
