Open Letter from the Co-Founders of Thesus: Why we are giving away 10 years' worth of our IP, and urging the industry's main players to use it.

Today, on the 10-year anniversary of Thesus, we are providing our biggest contribution to the industry yet.

In an effort to #accelerate our collective impact, we are giving away our IP. And urging the industry to use it.

Our “thes-us” (a theory, being proven by community action) has been this: we can help people connect to themselves, their community, and the Planet through the production of an everyday essential, in our case outdoor footwear.

For over 10 years we have gone against just about everything traditional business education has said we were supposed to do. We immersed ourselves in the industry at a systems level.

We moved around the world to build an inclusive ecosystem linking our products right back to the producers, farmers, and raw materials.

We slowly rebuilt old products in new and innovative ways, outside industry norms. Found simple solutions to complex problems. Spoke truth to power about global inequities in the supply chain of the trillion-dollar fashion industry. Took a route of inspiration and inclusion vs. aspiration and exclusion. We prioritized human rights and the environment over profit. We ran a global brand with a small and young team of women, in one of the most male-dominated industries on the Planet. We gave a platform and recognition to the millions of people who didn’t fit into the box of the “outdoorsy person”. We’ve helped shape and drive the narrative of a vision of a better world; one that is more connected to ourselves, our community and the planet.

Thesus has been an academic exercise, an act of rebellion, and an act of love.

For this, we’ve been identified as one of the best sustainable footwear brands on the market, nominated for awards, and given countless accolades. In 10 last years, as the world has come a long way in recognizing how integral sustainability is to our collective future, we can proudly say we have helped be a driver of that energy.

But in actuality, in these 10 years, not much has changed. Supply chain abuses in the Global South have not abated. Innovations have been made, but often siloed. We remain inches away from reaching a tipping point in the global climate crisis. And we are living through a nightmarish time in our collective history where we as a people are less connected to each other, the Planet, and our shared humanity than ever before. This vision we have for a better world seems to be unraveling right before our eyes.

So on the 10-year anniversary of Thesus, in an effort to find a way forward and to #accelerate our collective action, we have decided to make our biggest contribution yet. A seemingly small one in the grand scheme of things, but for us, this is huge.

Today we have open-sourced a decade’s worth of our work and developments, giving away our valued IP to the world.

Here you will find a full listing of our producers, materials suppliers, design thinking, and ecosystem mapping for our iconic Weekend BootTM made with a minimum of 96% renewable and recycled materials. They have been voted as one of the best versatile hiking boots and recognized as one of the most sustainable pieces of outdoor footwear on the market.

In just over three years, we have sold more than $3M worth of The Weekend BootTM. In making them, we have removed 25,000 lbs of plastic from our oceans and landfill, kept tens of thousands of trees firmly planted in the ground, minimized our dependence on the leather and fossil fuel industry, supported family-run producer partners in lieu of the normalized industry-wide exploitation of cheap labor and disposable lives in the Global South, gave due recognition to the established and growing BIPOC community in the outdoors, walked a collective 3.2 million miles, and help to inspire hundreds of thousands of people to Be Outside; connecting to themselves, the community and the Planet. The Weekend BootsTM have had a waitlist in the thousands and continues to be the engine of our business.

We have provided everything needed to help make these boots at scale and help bring your production in conformity with forthcoming legislation being put in place in the EU and NA, including the landmark legislation (The Fashion Act) put forward by the incredible industry maven Maxine Bedat. Everything necessary to help you build on and #amplify the positive impact our boots already have.

This is our contribution.

Now we are calling on the industry’s main players to join us. @Patagonia @REI and others, as values-aligned industry leaders who have been pioneers in open-sourcing your innovations, we ask you to take our IP and use it. #amplify and #accelerate our impact. Make it an industry norm, not an exception. You have the scale, reach, and means to do it. We are acutely aware that as a small and niche brand (in the torrents of the most volatile retail climate in our time ) we can’t do this alone. As an industry, we have to propel these ideals forward. This can only happen if we use our imaginations and do it together.

We know this will not be a quick fix. It is not supposed to be. It is about taking a stand for a long-term vision, and doing what is in our power to achieve it. It does not bring back the millions of acres of lost forests, or swaths of biodiversity going extinct by the day. This does not halt the suffering and destruction ever present around us. But what it does try to do is forge a collective path forward, recognizing just how much our economies, and the consumption of simple everyday products, can play a vital role in maintaining, and creating, the global and fragile interconnected ecosystems within which we live.

As we head into the next 10 years for Thesus, having traded off competition in favor of collaboration, we are left with our trademark, Thesus. Embedded in this trademark, is our mission to help people connect with themselves, their community, and the Planet. We are committed to continuing to use our platform for learning, building, inspiring, and educating, toward co-creating a future that is more #connected, #inclusive, and #regenerative. One that is more understanding of our #planetaryboundaries, and of ourselves, every one of us, as #nature.

Signed Sofi and Nick

Co-founders of Thesus, a socially and environmentally progressive outdoor footwear brand.