Making A Running Shoe With Natural Materials
How we broke the rules on conventional performance materials
Typically, when someone sets out to make a running shoe, their first question isn’t “what impact will this thing have on the environment?” But with the Tree Dasher, that’s where we started.
It’s safe to say it was a tricky place to begin. Mainly because the footwear industry holds an assumption that athletic shoes need to be made from synthetic materials, and that natural performance isn’t possible. Well, they also assumed we couldn’t make a sneaker out of wool. And you know what they say about assumptions…
So, that was the challenge for our design team: make a competitive, durable running shoe with natural materials. Dozens of prototypes and thousands of miles of testing later, they landed on the Tree Dasher. To get a sense of what happened in between, we caught up with our head of product development, Lisa Halblower-Fenton, and our design director, Olivier Henrichot.
Olivier Henrichot, Design Director
What was it like to make a performance shoe out of natural materials?This was a complex, but extremely refreshing, challenge, and I’m very proud of where we landed, and where we’re going. The performance running industry is usually pretty shy about the impact of their materials because they tend to favor all-out performance tech over the impact on the planet. It’s an old industry reflex, as “tech” is what most of these brands try to sell you even when it’s not innovative at all. It’s either that, or they make a super limited amount of one very sustainable shoe, then make a lot of noise about it, while on the side they’re still selling millions of dirty running shoes.
The Dasher forced us to reconsider a lot of these assumptions, and a lot of our habits. And when you do that and stick with it, you end up with different perspectives and solutions. I believe that’s the strength of Allbirds. It turns out you don’t have to make performance shoes out of dino-juice to make them well.
Nature provides so many opportunities, it’s just about finding the right way to work with it to get the results you want.
What were some design changes that were made during the process that you think led to a better product?
To an extent, the entire design and development process was one long series of iterations and revisions, with the unique goal of making a better running product in a better way. We started with a picture of where we wanted to go visually, and then made many prototypes, testing and adapting every time new challenges arose.
The heel construction, for example — the wool lining looks simple but took many iterations and several different forms before we were able to make it work. Initially, the material wasn’t holding up, and the construction was challenging and uncomfortable. But despite the problems, we kept at it and we made it happen. We developed a new material, adapted the assembly, and fixed the issue. Many other brands would have just reverted to a set of best practices established decades ago, but instead, we worked through it without sacrificing on our goal of doing better for the planet.
What’s up with the pattern on the bottom of the outsole?
The pattern is a nod to movement, through the lens of our design ethos “the right amount of nothing.” A lot of our previous shoes have had dot motifs. And since we’re stepping into a new category with our first performance shoe, where movement is the essence, we took those dots and made them move. If a dot is at rest and you move it, it becomes a dash. It’s a little bit like the stars in the sky becoming light dashes when the spaceship engages warp speed in science fiction movies! The dash motif also conveys notions of rhythm, regularity, and consistency over time and distance — all important parts of running.
Lisa Halblower-Fenton, Head of Product Development
What typically goes into the development of a performance shoe, and what makes the Tree Dasher different?
Since the advent of the athletic shoe boom, the indication of success when engineering performance shoes is developing new components, or “technologies”, that when built into a specific area of the shoe either enhance performance or reduce injury. These components run the gamut — everything from plastic rearfoot support structures that limit over-pronation, foam plugs, and airbags to hollow molded cushioning plastics, plastic upper cages, and plastic heel counter supports for stability. And furthermore, the ultimate goal is to expose these technologies. So that means adding even more components to build a window into the bottom of the shoe, or creating some other visual representations of the technology so it can be messaged to the customer while they’re looking at the shoe on the retail shelf. These unnecessary components add cost, additional processes, and often more plastic to the footwear.
When developing the Tree Dasher, we challenged the assumptions that an athletic shoe needs to be made from synthetics, and that it needs excessive componentry to enhance performance, reduce injury, and meet durability standards.
How does this shoe compare to a traditional running shoe?
A traditional “neutral, light-stability running shoe” is made of a synthetic upper, petroleum-based foam midsole, and carbon rubber outsole. Performance technologies are usually additional molded plastic or rubber components that are either sewed, cemented, or molded into the shoe.
On the other hand, the Tree Dasher is made from natural materials, such as the eucalyptus fiber performance mesh upper, enhanced with anti-microbial ZQ Certified Merino wool. Add to that a bottom unit made with a sugarcane-based midsole and natural rubber outsole. We engineered cushioning and stability features right into the geometry of the upper, midsole, and outsole design — that means no extra components added in. Just the right amount of nothing.
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