Eco-friendly footwear maker Allbirds reminded Amazon that if you're cloning other people's products, at least do it well.
Allbirds has once again addressed a problem that has been raised before - the world's largest e-commerce site is placing cheaper clones of branded goods on its pages, thereby participating in dubious commercial activities. And she did it in a rather elegant and witty way, advising Amazon to clone the best features of Allbirds shoes. Namely, to use high-quality materials and take care of the environment.
It's about your own brand. Amazon - 206 Collective, which is accused of selling shoes that are almost completely copied from Allbirds specimens. And this is not the only example of such behavior, Amazon has already been convicted of copying products in various areas and selling cheaper clones under various brands.
Allbirds CEO Joey Zwillinger urged the biggest player in the e-commerce market to make their shoes more environmentally friendly in a Medium post. “We are flattered by the similarity of your own brand shoes to ours, but we hope that sustainable materials will also be included in the general characteristics,” writes Zwillinger, not missing the opportunity to go into detail about such materials used by both Allbirds and other responsible manufacturers.
Specifically, Amazon is being asked to "borrow" chemically-created SweetFoam, the world's first sustainable ethylene vinyl acetate that uses sugar cane waste instead of oil. SweetFoam is used in the soles of Allbirds and other shoe manufacturers. Amazon is also encouraged to do this, because given the scale of the company's sales, its use of this and similar materials would help reduce their cost in the market. And such joint efforts can eventually lead to a positive impact on the process of climate change.
