Saye
When Marta told Lizzie and Damian to join Wado, back in February 2017, they didn’t think it twice. At that time, it was just an idea consisting of an online sneakers brand that would plant trees for each sale and that hopefully would collect enough funds from Kickstarter to cover some of the first production costs. From that moment, and for one whole year, the three of them got involved in the project, dealing with suppliers, inaccurate prototypes and preparing the Kickstarter campaign.
In March 2018 they finally launched Wado and the campaign was a complete success. It allowed them to produce the first 7.000 pairs of sneakers and they became the most funded Spanish fashion project ever on Kickstarter. After that month, in April 2018, they moved the project to Indiegogo and used the platform as the only online sales channel for more than 20 months. That period allowed them to make the project grow and turn it into an actual company with 8 people employed. At the end of that period, they had become the most funded fashion shoe ever on the history of the crowdfunding platform. In December 2019 they closed Indiegogo and moved to their own e-commerce. At the same time, and due to a trademark issue, which prevented them from continuing to expand internationally, they decided to change their name to Saye.
Saye´s goal is to make cool sneakers you’ll want to wear for years, while continuing to:
Become a zero-waste brand, using in the products as much as recycled materials as possible.
Fight for fair workforce conditions, producing the sneakers carefully in the EU.
Fight against deforestation, planting 2 trees for each sale.
Saye uses sustainable fabrics, like recycled vegan napa, recycled post-consumer PET, natural and synthetic rubber, recycled PU foam and organic cotton. The Vegan Napa contains 35% recycled post-consumer fibers (RPET), made of discarded garments and different reintroduced PET articles. It is a Global Recycled Standard (GRS) product, manufactured in Spain. GRS is an international standard that sets requirements for third-party certification of recycled content, chain of custody, social and environmental practices, and chemical restrictions. The objectives of the GRS are to define requirements to ensure accurate content claims and good working conditions as harmful environmental and chemical impacts are minimized. The rest of the Vegan Napa is made of 11% Polyester and 54% Polyurethane, which is a high-quality PU (HIGH SOLID) and free of DMF’s (dimethyl formaldehyde), a substance that can occur in liver damage for long exposed workers if it gets absorbed by the skin.
Regarding the PET, Saye uses 50% recycled post-consumer PET (RPET) with GRS traceability + 50% PES to ensure the best performance in our lining. The lining starts its life in a recycling PET plant where they treat post-consumer plastic bottles and other PET articles that are thrown into the “yellow” container. Once these materials are treated and transformed into cones of recycled fibers, our Spanish supplier transform them into a comfortable and brand-new lining.
The outsole is made in Portugal and is composed of 30% natural rubber and 70% synthetic rubber. Both natural and synthetic rubber have a high tear resistance, good low temperature flexibility, and high tensile strength. This mix allows maximum performance and comfort.
For the recycled PU foam, Saye recovers Polyurethane (PU) leftovers from European automotive factories that otherwise would become waste, and transformd it into brand new insoles made out of 60% recycled PU + 40% virgin PU. The insole is covered by a 50% recycled post-consumer PET (RPET) + 50% PES lining.These insoles are especially designed and developed in perfect harmony with the environment, with excellent physical and mechanical properties. Its key component, Carbon, is a plant-based substance that has absorbing properties and has also breathability and desorption properties, which eliminates moisture, thermal sensation and unwanted odors.
Saye uses organic cotton that’s certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) for the laces. GOTS is the worldwide leading textile processing standard for organic fibers, including ecological and social criteria, backed up by independent certification of the entire textile supply chain. A product with this label ensures a minimum of 95% of organic fibers. Becoming GOTS certified is by no means easy, but to us there is no other way. GOTS helps ensure that the organic cotton is sourced in the most ethical and sustainable way.
The counter and the puff of the sneakers are invisible stiff piece reinforcements located between the lining and the upper that help maintain the shape of the shoe. The counter helps strengthen the rear of the shoe and the puff helps the toe cap. For these parts, Saye recovers thermoplastic leftover plates and transforms them into new puffs and counters, adding also up to 35% of wood chips recovered from the carpentry industry.
For the packaging Saye uses 100% recycled boxes and paper manufactured in Portugal with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) certifications. When timber leaves an FSC or PEFC certified forest we ensure companies along the supply chain meet our best practice standards, so when a product bears the FSC / PEFC logo, you can be sure it’s been made from responsible sources. In this way, both certifications help forests remain thriving environments for generations to come, by helping you make ethical and responsible choices. Packaging is the leading contributor to pollution, specifically in marine environments. Petroleum-based plastics only exacerbate this pollution problem and have a profound effect on the environment and wildlife that lives there.
In an effort to reduce their environmental impact, we've decided to avoid plastic bags. Instead, Saye uses biodegradable mailer bags made from natural starch (for every single order). When exposed to light, air, moisture and microbes, these bio-bags break down to natural elements that are found in nature. Plastic-free packaging, while laborious to produce, is a step in the right direction for minimizing the amount of petroleum-based plastics that end up in landfill.
In Asian countries like Bangladesh, India, China, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia or Cambodia among others, the paid minimum wage barely represents between half to fifth of the living wage. Living wage is required to fulfill the basic needs of food, rent, healthcare and education of a family. For instance, in Bangladesh, the minimum wage has recently increased to 63$/month, but despite this rise, it is still 60% below of 170$, the needed living wage. Long working hours and forced overtime are a major concern among industry workers. Factory managers typically push employees to work between 10 and 12 hours, sometimes 16 to 18 hours a day. A seven-day working week is becoming the norm during the peak season, particularly in China, despite limits placed by the law. The collapse of the Rana Plaza in 2013, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing 1134 workers and injuring more than 2.500 who manufactured garment for many of the biggest apparel companies in the world, has revealed the unacceptable working conditions of the whole fashion industry to the world. Employees usually work with no ventilation, breathing in toxic substances, inhaling fiber dust or blasted sand in unsafe buildings. Accidents, fires, injuries, and disease are very frequent occurrences on textile production sites. According to the International Labour Organisation, 152 million children are engaged in child labour worldwide. Nearly half of all those -73 million- are in hazardous work that directly endangers their health, safety, and moral development. More than 40% of the child labour is found in the Asia and the Pacific (62.1 million). Because the fashion industry requires low-skilled labour, child labor is particularly common in this industry.
Saye has always been determined not to be part of this. From the beginning they only wanted to partner with suppliers that respect their workers, improving their life conditions and providing them a good working environment; a factory where employment is freely chosen and where child labor is not used in any case. Therefore, the focus was on finding partners in Europe that work under the same values as Saye believes in. The search started in their own country, Spain, but after visiting several factories and not meeting the expectations, they decided to knock the door on our neighbor country, Portugal, well known not only for its quality footwear industry but also for the excellence of its service and the ability to deliver small series; There Saye found their partner.
Located in the North of Portugal, Felgueiras is the heart of the country’s footwear industry. Our partner, You Shoes, is made up of artisans that really love the work they do. They have been maintaining a high standard of ethics -fair wages and shifts, gender equality- from the beginning. Most imporantly, they treat their workers as family.
The employees of the factory receive an average salary of 850€/month distributed in 14 pays and its gender distribution is balanced (60% men – 40% women). They work 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday (from 8am to 6pm with 2hours break to have breakfast and lunch); therefore, they work 40 hours a week and overtime hours are paid 50% more. On peak season, extra hours are permitted but also regulated; each worker is not allowed to work more than 2 extra hours per day. Concerning holidays, they have 22 working days of paid vacations a year. At Saye they encourage these suppliers to increase transparency by requiring our collaborators to perform social audits and recurrent chemical tests to verify that trust, integrity and honesty are guaranteed in their work environments. They yearly conduct a social and ethical trade audit to make sure our factories respect our values and meet our criteria as well as to identify areas where improvement can still be made. Saye also works with suppliers from Alicante, Spain. The concentration of their manufacturing suppliers within the same geographical area allows us to create an efficient and fast collaborating network which ensures the use of local materials and reduces their carbon footprint. In addition, sharing habits and customs with their collaborators facilitates communication and generates greater involvement of our suppliers in the project, which has a direct impact on the quality of our final product.
Forests cover 31% of the land area on our planet. They produce vital oxygen and provide homes for people and wildlife. Unfortunately, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), we humans are destroying 7,4 million hectares of forests annually which is the size of Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg altogether). At Saye they fight against deforestation since 2018 allowing anyone to take part in our project. Every time you buy a pair of shoes the growth of two trees is funded in collaboration with the NGO We Forest. Joining forces enables us not only to restore the trees in the most needed areas of the Planet, but also to empower forest-dependent local communities providing them with tools for their livelihood development and training them on how to regenerate and protect the forest so it can become a sustainable wood and food resource to them. So far 76.434 trees, 30.326 trees in India, 43.878 in Zambia, 248 in the Amazon and 1.982 in Australia, have been funded. The goal is to double this number by the end of 2020, reaching 100.000 trees.
Based: Barcelona, Spain.
Ships to: Worldwide.
Products: For now we only sell sneakers (some are vegan and some are made with leather). In October we are launching our first clothing capsule.
Mission: Our goal is to make classic sneakers and use them as a vehicle for change. A change in our society and on our planet. Sneakers for Gamechangers.
Vision: We want to become a zero-waste brand with time. We are putting all our efforts into becoming a better brand every day.
