Walking the Walk, End Footwear Promotes Responsible Business and Shoes

By Anna Brones

Ben Finklea, End Co-Founder

Walking into the headquarters of End Footwear is like stepping into a dream world of green design and outdoor enthusiasm. The space has a minimalist feel; the only form of decoration along the hallway is the various pairs of End shoes perched on pedestals. At the end of the hall lies an open meeting space, framed pictures of End shoes on one wall and torn out pages of various sport and travel magazines on the other. It’s easy to see where this company gets its inspiration for the End athlete. “This wall over here is one we refer to a lot. It’s not that Nike athlete I grew up on, the superstar athlete. It’s the idea of the everyday athlete,” says Ben Finklea, End Co-Founder.

If you’re not familiar with End shoes, you should be. Its name standing for Environmentally Neutral Design, the company has made a name for itself in the realm of green gear because of its progressive company policies and cutting edge design. But it’s not just because the shoes have a minimalist design which cuts down on waste that has made eco-conscious athletes and outdoor enthusiasts excited about the brand; in the case of End, responsible design means more creative and affordable design available to the everyday athlete that End is catering to. “If you look at our core athlete, they’re an individual who is maybe graduating from college right now, getting into their first job and maybe they’re not going to go out and spend $120 on running shoes… It goes back to the idea of making sustainable design affordable. From the beginning we’ve always wanted it to be a product that everybody could get to,” says Finklea.

Getting to a sustainable design that actually costs the consumer less was a long and arduous process, involving many hours at both the drawing board and in the factories where the shoes are manufactured. Since the company’s inception, the team has focused on a less is more approach and has managed to diminish materials, reduce the use of glues by 90% and cut the amount of hands it takes to see a pair of shoes from start to finish in half. Instead of focusing on solely the final product like many other brands, End is committed to the whole process, from the materials used to the way the shoes are made. “It gets back to the art of craftsmanship, the detail that goes into it [manufacturing a shoe],” says Andrew Estey, End CEO and Co-Founder.

Women’s Laughing Out Loud

When you pick up a pair of End shoes, it’s immediately clear how different they are from everything else on the market. They feel drastically lighter and the aesthetic of the shoes is streamlined; only a few colors and a basic but distinct design give the shoes a look that certainly comes off as cool. One of the signifying design elements that make End shoes different (as well as more responsible) is that they don’t use injected plastics. This is key to minimizing production waste as every piece of plastic on a shoe is formed in a steel mold, and each size in a size run requires a different mold; an average size run for one model of shoe can use up to 5,000 pounds of steel. “We’re really trying to simplify the process. Every time you put a color in [the shoe] it takes a person, a process to get that color into it,” says Estey. Simplifying that process has allowed End to cut 20 tons worth of steel.

But what truly sets End apart from its competitors is the adherence to a philosophy of responsibility; it has become an integrated part, from the entire line of shoes to general company policies, of the business as a whole. “’Sustainable’ has become so watered down that we wanted to just focus it on the fact that we want to be responsible in all these different aspects. We try not to even use the word sustainable if we can because we just want sustainability… to be part of the overall story. It needs to be a part of the everyday discussion that we’re having,” says Finklea.

Looking forward, the goal is to keep setting the bar for responsible production higher and higher. Even Estey points out that “we can be much better than where we are at.” But keeping that perspective means that the End team is constantly looking for new ways to improve. In the spring 2010 line for example, every component from all of the new designs will be sourced from within a 100 mile radius of the factory. And although that’s a big commitment, making sure that they continue to push forward is exactly what End is all about. As Finklea puts it, “the ideals [of the company] are ideals that have been with us from day one, they’re in our DNA.”