S8. E4: Tina Bhojwani: They Don’t Look Vegan

“The idea is that we take and take and take from the planet. And we've been taking and there's all this talk about how can we get to neutral? And our company wanted to do something a little bit differently. We wanted to give back more than we were taking,” – Tina Bhojwani 

 
 

Tina Bhojwani is the co-founder and CEO of AERA, a luxury vegan footwear brand. In a past life, she held leadership roles at global brands including Donna Karan, Theory, and was President of Dolce & Gabbana North America. 

After two decades in the fashion world and frontrow seats to fashion’s impact on the planet and people and animals, Tina founded AERA - her answer to how the fashion world (and those of us who frequent it) can do better. All of AERA’s components are made from non-animal ingredients, they use as many eco-friendly materials as possible, ensuring that the end result is of the highest quality, and are committed to evolving their materials, with the ultimate goal to one day be able to create a shoe with zero environmental impact.

“Our shoes are certified Vegan. We went to great lengths to ensure that all components are made from non-animal ingredients, yet still maintain the quality and style expected from a luxury shoe.” - Tina Bhojwani

They’re also stunning, insanely comfortable and, as Tina likes to point out, "they don’t look vegan."

Please listen and share and check out AERA’s shoes. 

In gratitude,

Elizabeth Novogratz

Learn More About AERA

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Transcript:

Tina: [00:00:08] The idea is we take and take and take from the planet, we've just been taking. There's all this talk about how we can get to neutral. Our company wanted to do something a little bit differently. We wanted to give back more than we were taking.

Elizabeth: [00:00:37] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz, this is a Species Unite. We have a favor to ask. If you like today's episode and you have a spare minute, could you please rate and review Species Unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show. This conversation is with Tina Bhojwani. Tina spent her entire career in the fashion world. She was at Donna Karan, at Theory and was president of Dolce and Gabbana, North America. But she left all of that behind for vegan shoes. She's a co-founder of AERA. AERA makes some of the most beautiful shoes in the world, and they also happen to be vegan. Tina, thank you so much for letting me come over and talk to you today.

Tina: [00:01:47] Thanks for coming over. It's a pleasure to have you and to share the story of AERA.

Elizabeth: [00:01:52] We're sitting here in your showroom and there are beautiful shoes all around us. It's very tempting to just keep trying on shoes. They're beautiful, they're comfortable, and they don't look vegan, but they're vegan.

Tina: [00:02:08] That was the mission when we set out to build a business. My one main comment was, we need to make vegan and sustainable shoes that don't look like they are. So shoes that look as good as any other luxury shoe and that would be sort of the way to make a difference.

Elizabeth: [00:02:25] So, because when I went vegan seven years ago and when I did, I just assumed, oh, now I need to get vegan shoes. I was a little crazy. I got rid of everything I owned and then I went on this mission to find vegan shoes and it was like such slim pickings. But now you exist. So will you talk about, because you have a long career in the fashion world, so will you talk about the trajectory of that to how this got you here now.

Tina: [00:02:54] Absolutely. So I have always loved fashion. I remember being a little girl living in Westchester, New York, coming into the city and wanting to go shopping and being really inspired by everything around me when it came to fashion and style and reading magazines and all the rest. So I had an interest. However, I studied finance and international business in college and almost took a job working in the finance industry. Shortly before finalizing my decision, I met an alumni of my university who was working at Donna Karan. This is the mid nineties now and she said you should give your resume to the DKNY department because they're growing a lot. I was obsessed with the brand at the time and Donna and everything she was doing about women's empowerment and her campaign and Women We Trust, which had just run, I think, a couple of years prior. So I did and luckily I got a job as an assistant in the international sales department at Donna Karan. My father thought I was a little crazy because he thought, why would you not take a job in finance and why would you take a job in fashion? And I said, Let me do it for a year and, you know, I can always sort of go back. Thankfully, a year later I got a promotion and never looked back.

Elizabeth: [00:04:14] And you went from Donna Karan to where?

Tina: [00:04:18] To Theory. So with Donna, I was with the company for several years. My last two years were in London, and then I moved back to the States for personal reasons. I was introduced to the founder of Theory, Andrew Rosen. I loved what Theory stood for at the time. It was these great modern sort of basics, but not really basic basics that everyone could individually sort of put together in their own way. But it felt so cool and fresh and modern and I said to him, I'd been doing this international work. I said to him, you know, your brand should be everywhere and essentially he's like, You can join me right away. So I worked for Andrew for about 14 years and we built out the company outside of America.

Elizabeth: [00:05:01] And then you ended up as president of North America for Dolce and Gabbana.

Tina: [00:05:06] Yes. So I was looking to do something different after many, many years and something that didn't involve as much travel all over the world all the time. I had this opportunity to join Dolce and it was a little different. It was more of a sort of restructuring the business and rethinking it a little bit. I did that for a couple of years and then had this itch to do something entrepreneurial after that.

Elizabeth: [00:05:31] So before we get to the entrepreneurial itch, while you were working at all of these places and just being so immersed in the entire fashion world, were you really paying attention to the unsustainability and what was happening at the greater world at large, fashion wise and the planet?

Tina: [00:05:49] You know, I was and I wasn't. It's sort of easy to go through working for big companies and not even thinking about the supply chain and where everything's coming from and how it's made and who's behind it. To a certain degree, I worked for companies who were manufacturing and producing responsibly, but there was always that thought of, you know, more is more, more and how much are we making? So you do start to think a little bit about the larger industry. So maybe it wasn't particularly the companies I was in, but the industry at large. And, yes, there was an awareness, but not until I really went in and started thinking deeply about it and researching did I realize that we need to change and we need to change quickly, not just from an environmental point of view, but from a social point of view. I actually think the social point of view is more important than the environment.

Elizabeth: [00:06:45] Will you talk about that, the social point of view?

Tina: [00:06:47] The social point of view in a very simple way is, you know, are people who are making our clothes, our shoes, our accessories, are they earning a living wage? If you're buying something that's really inexpensive, did someone somewhere not get paid enough? Was it made by people who were underage? Were they not able to put food on the table? That's like basic human rights, if you will. I think it all starts there, to be honest.

Elizabeth: [00:07:17] And if they're working in certain industries like leather, if you're also your health is at risk.

Tina: [00:07:22] Yes. The exposure to toxic chemicals and obviously that's leather, but that's also just the dyeing process for garments, too. So it's a big challenge. How many people are doing it responsibly and limiting that interaction with these chemicals or not.

Elizabeth: [00:07:43] And so pre pandemic but not that far before the pandemic starts, you get this itch.

Tina: [00:07:48] Yes. To do something entrepreneurial. I think, to be honest, it was always with me because when I was at Donna Karan and when I was at Theory, the work I was doing felt very entrepreneurial. You were sort of building a brand in new regions and setting up partnerships and developing a business which was different from Dolce, which was fairly established. So I think I always liked the build, but I wanted something that would be purposeful and mission driven and that was really sort of how I felt. I felt very fortunate to have had the experience I had, to have worked with the people I'd worked with and worked for. It was sort of my thought that it's a good point in my life to think about how I can give back and how I can try to make a meaningful difference and address some of the issues that are industries facing in a meaningful way.

Elizabeth: [00:08:41] So you knew that it would be in fashion what you were going to do next, but you didn't know shoes?

Tina: [00:08:46] I did not know shoes. I had been thinking about apparel. I had been thinking about shoes. I had been thinking about handbags. The idea with shoes came about because I reconnected with the footwear designer that I had worked with and started asking questions like, can we make vegan shoes that don't look like they're vegan? I started researching some materials and we became partners and a third partner of ours is my main investor, who's someone I had gone to college with. He thought shoes were a great idea because it's a basic need, if you will. Perhaps not luxury shoes, but shoes in general. We're replacing our shoes more than we are probably other things in our wardrobe. I connected the two of them and we did research in terms of is anyone doing this? It was an open space and luxury footwear. So it seemed to me that there was an opportunity and if we could find the right materials and develop a brand in a meaningful way, that didn't look vegan, which was always in the back of my mind. Then there was a clear opportunity to do something different in the market.

Elizabeth: [00:10:01] And so what happened, like you get into this research phase and it's possible.

Tina: [00:10:06] Well, we think it's possible, right, because the materials look really interesting.

Elizabeth: [00:10:10] What are the materials?

Tina: [00:10:11] So the materials are mixed. They're synthetic and bio based materials. Everything Is sourced in Italy, North Italy, because we were also conscious of the footprint of shipping components all over the world. Our main material supplier is based in Milan and they have been pioneering vegan materials since the 1960s. So what was essentially like really all plastics or synthetics is now evolved into more conscious materials. Unfortunately today it is impossible to make a pair of quality shoes without having synthetics in them. So that's something, you know, I was naive when we started, I'm like, we're going to make bio based shoes that are luxury and, you know, and comfortable and all the rest and quickly found out that that wouldn't be possible. But we felt like we wanted to start and so a 5050 seemed like a good place.

Elizabeth: [00:11:08] Why is that like why is it so hard to do like the impossible at this point to do like 100%?

Tina: [00:11:14] Because when you think of what's out there today and you hear about pineapple leathers or apple leathers or cactus leathers like those materials need something to bind them together and that's typically a synthetic.

Elizabeth: [00:11:27] So otherwise you just have pineapple on your feet. 

Tina: [00:11:29] Yeah, so I think sometimes that's a bit misleading to the customer. You know, we from the outset said, our shoes have synthetics in them. We need them to achieve the look and feel and quality. However, the synthetics we're using have less than one third of an impact on the planet then animal material. So they were already better.

Elizabeth: [00:11:48] Way better.

Tina: [00:11:49] So.

Elizabeth: [00:11:49] And there's no animal. 

Tina: [00:11:50] Absolutely. Well, that was a part of it too. We wanted to make vegan shoes.

Elizabeth: [00:11:56] It's only been a couple of years since you've launched. Talk about the space since you've launched, because it feels like people are so much more on board than when I first went vegan and literally no non vegan would ever even like to put their foot in a vegan shoe, right? Now I know so many people who aren't vegan but love all this like they're so excited about this whole kind of revolution of what's happening in fashion with vegan bags, shoes, coats.

Tina: [00:12:27] It's nice to see that people are more aware and to be honest with you, even when we launched the company, which was officially launched in February of 2020. So talk timing. But people were not really, people were open, but the reception we get today is much greater than even what we had a couple of years ago. So I've seen the shift just in the short period that I've been in the space, which is exciting and I think people are just more aware. Maybe that was one of the silver linings of this, this tough couple of years we had raising our awareness. I think a lot of it is coming from Gen Y and Gen Z and not just Gen Y and Gen Z for themselves, but sort of their platforms and educating their parents and educating their peers. So I think a lot of this dialogue is happening today, which is great. I mean, we still have a long way to go.

Elizabeth: [00:13:26] Will you talk about that a little bit, because we were at an event the other night where we met and it was about the future of materials. The future of materials is incredibly exciting. The non-animal very eco-friendly future of materials. But in the big picture and in the sense of all the big kinds of brands shifting that way, we're not there yet material wise, right? Will you explain that a little bit?

Tina: [00:13:52] We're not there yet, but I see progress on all fronts. So I think that there's a lot happening with lab grown materials. I think one that's very exciting is mycelium. I think as the awareness grows and the demand comes from the consumer, these types of businesses, they're going to get investment and collaborations. I think of what Hermès is doing right now with MycoWorks, which is the mycelium leather and Hermès I mean, I think it's one of the top luxury brands and they don't really need to change anything. But the fact that they are waking up to what the younger generations are looking towards and actually experimenting with the material like this is great because A, it shows that there is a consciousness in the industry if a company like Hermes is getting involved and B it shows investors that there's a bigger opportunity. So take a risk on a material like this because such a company is. So ultimately then the company can scale and people like me can have access to the materials which otherwise would be impossible from a scalability point of view.

Elizabeth: [00:15:06] A lot of celebs I noticed I read are wearing your shoes.

Tina: [00:15:10] Yes, we were fortunate in that way. Jane Fonda was just featured on the cover of Glamor Wearing Our Shoes and she's amazing. She's an activist and has an incredible platform. But we have sent shoes to Natalie Portman and Jessica Chastain, and Meryl Streep has worn our shoes. A whole host of people. Katie Holmes is wearing one of our boots throughout the pandemic. So we've been fortunate in that sense.

Elizabeth: [00:15:38] That's really cool.

Tina: [00:15:38] Celebrities have responded to what we've done and even before we were really out there. So during the pandemic, which was great.

Elizabeth: [00:15:48] Your shoes really don't look, I would never if I was in a shoe store and your shoes are there, I would never say, oh, look, they're vegan, right?

Tina: [00:15:56] That is our goal. You know, we want to reach mainstream consumers.  The reality is, I have worked in this industry my whole career, the consumer doesn't want to compromise. Our mission was to prove that style, quality and design can go hand in hand with sustainability. If that's there and the customer doesn't feel like they're compromising and the price is fair, I feel like we can convert a lot of people and build a lot of awareness.

Elizabeth: [00:16:26] Right. From my perspective, I feel like the more mainstream people that start wearing vegan, it just like then the more do it and more do it. It gets exponential and it becomes very normal and it's starting to normalize, which excites me. Beyond excites me, so I think it's awesome. So will you talk about, now the three of you are a team and you're like, okay, we're doing these shoes. But to go from that to what I'm sitting here looking at, this is stunning. It's like I'm in the most beautiful shoe store. It's awesome and how you got here and I mean, I'm sure there were a lot of hurdles to getting from there to here.

Tina: [00:17:04] There certainly were.

Elizabeth: [00:17:06] In the pandemic as well.

Tina: [00:17:08] Absolutely. There were a lot of hurdles. You know, to be an entrepreneur in this space, I think you've got to have a lot of tenacity and determination and wherewithal. Funny story, so our whole idea was to make vegan and sustainable shoes, but in an artisanal way so truly luxury. Make the shoes with the old process by hand in Italy, in Veneto, which is where luxury shoes were born, with these new materials. When we first approached our main factory, they thought we were crazy. They said, Why would you want to use these materials? We explained it to them and then they started working with the materials and they were like, This doesn't work. We're like, No, no, no, it can work. Let's try it this way and let's try it that way. Ultimately we got it to work. But it took about one and a half times as long to make a pair of our shoes just because the materials are different and they have different flexibility. Then think of things like glue and we had to use vegan glue. Our first sort of vegan glue didn't work very well. So there was a lot of trial and error and frustrations on all sides. What's really beautiful now is the main factory we work with. The son of the owner has studied sustainability and they see this as a meaningful way to to build a future for their business. You know, these small factories are dying out. So we came out of it giving this multigenerational factory hope for the future and an expertise in something that not a lot of people can do.

Elizabeth: [00:18:57] That is super cool. Now the fact that they're like, they're going to use this for other products and yeah. Everything you guys do across the board is completely different from a lot of the bigger fashion industry in the sense of you think about people, you think about the planet, you think about animals.

Tina: [00:19:16] Yes, it's the welfare of people, of planets, of animals. We relied a lot on science and certification. I believe that today, like if you say I'm launching a sustainable shoe brand, you know, that can mean different things to different people. So we wanted to.

Elizabeth: [00:19:35] And it doesn't mean a lot anymore because everyone says sustainable. 

Tina: [00:19:41] It’s become this sort of mainstream marketing term that applies to very many different things and it can mean a lot, but it can also mean very little. For us, you know, from the outset, we wanted to use science and use transparency and get certification from a third party so that it could validate the work we were doing. We partnered with an amazing company called SES Global Services in California and they helped us to scientifically measure every impact from cradle to consumer. Today we're carbon negative and we're certified that way. We're also freshwater negative. Then most recently we've become B Corp certified, which is a really rigorous process and I think it's sort of the highest validation when it comes to saying you're sustainable. Both environmentally and socially. 

Elizabeth: [00:20:38] And I'm assuming it's pretty rare in the vegan shoe world, right?

Tina: [00:20:43] We were the first ones. We wanted to be the first one and I hope more people do it.

Elizabeth: [00:20:48] Yeah.

Tina: [00:20:49] There's a few companies doing it in the apparel space. But in the shoes and the luxury footwear, there was no one.

Elizabeth: [00:20:57] That's very cool. Congratulations. Will you go back to carbon negative for a minute?

Tina : [00:21:02] Sure. When we launched our company. The idea is we take and take and take from the planet. We've just been taking. There's all this talk about how we can get to neutral. Our company wanted to do something a little bit differently. We wanted to give back more than we were taking. So we scientifically measured everything. Instead of just giving back to neutralize it, we gave back the extra 10% so we could help the planet heal a little bit more. It's sort of, we've been taking so let's just give back a little bit more than what we've taken, in this process. So we invest in projects like reforestation projects and giving back to the environment more than what amounts for what we've taken. But I don't want it to sound like we're just doing whatever we want and then offsetting it. We start with very low impact to begin with, but everything still has an impact and we want it to address the impact of our business.

Elizabeth: [00:22:01] That's awesome. That's so cool. But you kind of think that should become a thing with brands across the globe, right?

Tina: [00:22:08] So we were hoping that if we started out by setting this type of an example, maybe it would inspire others. Because our crisis is real and coming quickly and we've got to move quickly and maybe neutral just isn't enough.

Elizabeth: [00:22:24] Then you launch and then because you're in the pandemic, where do your shoes go?

Tina: [00:22:29] So we launched online and no one was really buying a lot of shoes, let alone luxury high heels. But a loan from a brand that had just hit the market that was vegan and sustainable. So we had a tough time when we launched and just really said, let's rethink our plans and let's see how we can keep the company together. We're very small to begin with, so we had to just readjust a little bit and we worked on building community and certification and getting the word out there and the storytelling. Then we managed to get through that and now we are still small. We're doing our first seed raise as we speak, but we have a small distribution. So we've sold shoes to Saks Fifth Avenue and The Conservatory in Dallas, Texas. We're available on Nordstrom.com. We're selling in Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, and we started to get demand globally, which is exciting.

Elizabeth: [00:23:31] It's crazy. It's awesome.

Tina: [00:23:33] Yeah. The next step is really to raise money and structure the business and be able to operate on a larger scale.

Elizabeth: [00:23:38] I love it. I am so excited about it. This is what really moves the needle, I think. I mean, this is no offense to any vegans because I'm a vegan, you know, and I love vegans, but stuff just made for us doesn't really work in the sense of like, let's get the whole world. It's the same as like veggie burgers were okay, but that wasn't going to make a meat eater start eating them until Beyond Burgers came round and then all the meat eaters started eating them. It's kind of similar in that sense of, not comparing your shoes to a burger, but in the sense of like it has to be what the greater population wants and desires that really shifts the masses.

Tina: [00:24:19] And we hope to inspire people to make a better choice and to buy shoes that give back to the planet, but first and foremost, fall in love with them, not just from an aesthetic point of view, but from a comfort point of view.

Elizabeth: [00:24:32] Yeah, they're crazy comfortable.

Tina: [00:24:34] That's a big thing for us. We developed during the pandemic because we realized people are not going back to suffering in a way that I used to. When I started working in fashion I'd wear those three and four inch heels all day, every day and, you know, and run around like that. But that's not that's not what people are doing today. So how can we make shoes that are as comfortable as possible? We developed an eco-friendly quilting detail in our shoes. So there is an extra cushion for people who want to run around in 95 millimeter high heels so they can be more comfortable.

Elizabeth: [00:25:11] And I just tried them on and they're insanely comfortable. They're like little clouds under your feet. It doesn't even make sense that you're in these tall heels and your feet feel so good. They're kind of like slippers.

Tina: [00:25:23] I'm glad you got to try them on, because I think that, you know, that's been one of our challenges is sort of being a mainly direct to consumer brand and trying to relay that message online. The shoes look pretty online but until you try them on, I think it's hard to really understand the comfort level and with high heels I think it's very important. So I'm hopeful that we have some retail presence in the near future so people can see and try on our shoes.

Elizabeth: [00:25:54] I love it. When you started, you were making men shoes, right? Are you still?

Tina: [00:25:59] We are not making men's shoes. As I mentioned before, I have two male co-founders and we experimented with women's and men's and had a test phase, which I recommend to anyone who's launching a business to sort of go through a test phase before you officially launch. That test phase was sort of the middle of 2019 for a few months. We had just some small events and friends and family got involved and we quickly saw that 95% of our customers were women. We also realized our limitations as a small company. So we decided to launch with women's only and rethink men's in the future as the company grows. So today we're just doing women's. We've also had a lot of requests from our customers for handbags, so I think that's an interesting opportunity in the future. The person who wants vegan and sustainable shoes, wants a bag that can also go with them.

Elizabeth: [00:27:01] We need more good vegan handbags in the world. We really do.

Tina: [00:27:05] So down the line step by step. But I think that's something that we would consider later on.

Elizabeth: [00:27:10] Tina, thank you so much. I'm so excited about the shoes. I can't even tell you.

Tina: [00:27:15] It's such a pleasure meeting you and thank you for the great work you're doing to inspire people around veganism and beyond.

Elizabeth: [00:27:31] To learn more about Tina, to learn about AERA shoes, go to our website SpeciesUnite.com. We will have links to everything. We're on Facebook and Instagram, @SpeciesUnite. If you have a spare moment and could do us a favor, please subscribe, rate, review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. If you'd like to support Species Unite, we would greatly appreciate it. Go to our website, SpeciesUnite.com and click Donate. I'd like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santina Polky, Bethany Jones and Anna Connor, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.


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S8. E3: Gordon Meade: Zoospeak