Veja is a French brand of ecological and fair trade footwear and accessories.
Veja’s model is founded on an ethical footing at every stage of the business: from sourcing and the production cycle, right through to packaging, distribution. The brand, which launched in 2004, has proudly used exclusively fair trade, organic, raw materials since day one.
Veja sources materials directly from local producers in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and stitches them together at a socially conscious factory in southern Brazil. Shoes are made with Pesticide-, GMO- and fertilizer-free organic cotton, for which the company says it pays the producers as much as three times the market price to help them survive. It also experiments with odd ecological materials, such as leather made from the skin of tilapia, a fish commonly farmed for food.
The final products are then assembled near Porto Alegre in factories where working conditions and wages are higher and fairer than the industry standard for the country. Even their European warehouse and logistics network works with Ateliers Sans Frontières, an organization that aims to rehabilitate ex-offenders and drug-users. Lastly, the French headquarters use ENERCOOP (a cooperative of green electricity, rather than EDF, the French national nuclear supplier.
Visit Veja’s online store to browse their latest collection and to read about the project in more detail.
You can find Veja at Barneys and Madewell.
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