Allbirds CEO: Why Sustainability Leads to Profitability
Allbirds co-founder Joey Zwillinger talks with Shopify on Location in San Francisco about outsider thinking, comfortable shoes with minimal branding, learning from direct customers and a used-shoe resale program. Notes cover selected product and business passages from essentially the full public auto-captions, checked against official Shopify show notes dated May 18, 2023. The video was uploaded again on March 28, 2024; the date shown here follows the original show-note date. Climate-policy passages are not covered. Zwillinger's sustainability, sales and resale claims are his account at the time, not independently verified outcomes or a current assessment of Allbirds profitability.
Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Allbirds co-founder Joey Zwillinger talks with Shopify on Location in San Francisco about outsider thinking, comfortable shoes with minimal branding, learning from direct customers and a used-shoe resale program. Notes cover selected product and business passages from essentially the full public auto-captions, checked against official Shopify show notes dated May 18, 2023. The video was uploaded again on March 28, 2024; the date shown here follows the original show-note date. Climate-policy passages are not covered. Zwillinger's sustainability, sales and resale claims are his account at the time, not independently verified outcomes or a current assessment of Allbirds profitability.
Key Takeaways
Two outsiders
Tim Brown, a New Zealander who played professional soccer and was vice captain of the national team at the 2010 World Cup, found the sports industry underdelivered. Zwillinger ran a chemicals group at a San Francisco biotech making alternatives to petrochemicals.