From adidas to Regenerative and Eco-Friendly Fashion

Eric Liedtke, co-founder and CEO of the Unless Collective, discusses the shift in consumer attitudes towards sustainability and eco-friendly products. He highlights the importance of consumers making a difference through their purchases and how brands can create products that align with their values. Eric explains the concept of regenerative fashion, which involves making clothing from plants and minerals that harmlessly decompose when discarded.

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📌TALKING POINTS

00:58 - Evolution of Consumer Attitudes Towards Sustainability and Eco-Friendly Products

10:37 - Leaving Adidas and Starting His Own Company

27:04 - Scaling a Mission-Driven Company

29:30 - The Power of Partnerships in Scaling Sustainable Fashion

🔗CONNECT WITH ERIC

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-liedtke-890130115/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eric.liedtke/?hl=en 

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Tom Finn (00:11.16)

Welcome, welcome to the show, my friend. Today we are learning and sitting down with Eric Liedtke. Eric, welcome to the show.

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eric (00:18.846)

Great to be here, Tom. Thanks for having me.

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Tom Finn (00:20.536)

We are excited to have you. I cannot wait to get into all things apparel with you today. If you don't know Eric, he is the co-founder and CEO of the Unless Collective. It is the world's first regenerative fashion brand, formerly a very senior executive at Adidas. Eric led groundbreaking initiatives in material innovation and sustainability. He drove over 8 billion in revenue growth. That's with a B in just six years. And with a career spanning 26 years, Eric is recognized in his consumer led innovation, including the creation of Adidas boost. And those of you might know the billion dollar Yeezy brand. So Eric, with all of that as a background in consumer work and fashion, how have you seen attitudes of the consumer change towards sustainability and eco-friendly products over time?

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eric (01:18.654)

That's a good question. It's definitely been a journey, right? Even for myself. But if we focus on the consumers, I think, back in the day when I started my career, it was what we would call millennials. We started talking to millennials, which were a certain breed of consumers that are now occupying the majority of the workforce. They were not as concerned about sustainability in general as the research would later show that Gen Z and Gen A are definitely coming up, Gen Alpha. I think what I found over my time in the research is that consumers want to make a difference in general.

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They care about things like, uh, like, uh, me too, movements. They care about black lives matter. They care about climate change. They don't always know how they can lean in other than doing the most, you know, the most, you know, um, obvious things like activism and, and, and those types of, uh, items. They don't know that their, their purchases can be the critical ground floor driver of creating change and who they support with their money. Cause as we live in a capitalist world, let's be honest, your purchases then affect capitalism. It affects consumers and it affects what you what you're offered on a daily basis So as we were doing a lot of research at Adidas and we when we led the turnaround We we knew that the consumers, you know, they cared about us as a sports brand, right? We have to make product that helps them jump higher run faster kick stronger We knew we recognized that the culture of sport doesn't change when you leave the pitch or we leave the court it goes with you into the hallways into the streets in the music venues and that's where Beyonce and Taylor Swift and Kanye and everybody else kind of comes to the forefront and starts to have an impact. But we also recognize that every one of us have a 24 seven doom scroller on our hands that screws toll. That we definitely scroll through the trials and tribulations of our daily lives. And we're exposed to things more and more readily than ever before. So if they want to make a difference in all three of those areas, you know, as a sports brand, you have to figure out how you can do that. And what we heard loud and clear through our actions with Parley for the Oceans when I was at Ditas is that that shot to the top of all three. So we did our Parley for the Oceans And when we launched our product at the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, so primarily talking probably to Gen Z at that time, that post we did with a drowning sea turtle in gill net saying we were curing for that by making footwear out of recovered ocean plastic gill nets. One as high, one as far and as wide as anything we ever did with Lionel Messi or Kanye West. And that was the kind of aha moment that unlocked the brand's positioning to say, you know, this is not just philanthropy.

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This is good for business because the consumers are really leaning into it. They want to see the obvious connection to buying that shoe is going to help clean my oceans. And when you make it that easy, when you make the product and the story so intertwined that they can see that their purchases are making that difference, you'll see it continue to build up. And now there's ocean plastic companies all over the place. There's ocean plastic supply chains. There's ocean plastic footwear brands. There's ocean plastic bag brands. There's ocean plastic just really… prevalent all over the place. And it's because of that single use case that we did in 2015. And the next step is, you know, how do we lean into Generation Alpha? Let's talk about them for a second. There's not going to be, they're the first generation that's going to grow up not knowing a world without climate change. It's going to be front and center in their face each and every day. I mean, if you look at the floods that just happened in Dubai the other day, they had what, a year's worth of rain in one day.

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You can't tell me that the earth is not going through dramatic changes based upon climate warming. And we don't know what that's going to look like. We don't know how dire that's going to be for different populations, different countries, different people. We know that it's all going to fall right on the backs of Generation Alpha, which are kids that are being born and are in their early ages right now. So I think it's 11 years and younger at this point is Generation Alpha. I have two at my house. They're talking about it each and every day in different ways. And it's interesting to discover it. So it's changed dramatically from, you know, if you go from all the way to Gen X to millennials to Gen Z, now Gen Alpha, it's not a nice to have. It's not something you can do when everything else is running smoothly. It's something you need to do right now. And if you want to drive innovation, you want to drive change in your industries, you have to speak to the consumers where they are and pick them up. It doesn't mean you have to wag your finger. It just means you have to give them an option to do something a little bit better for their world.

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Tom Finn (06:11.832)

So I think what I'm hearing is all of this started when you were at Adidas, you started to get the wheels turning from an advertising initiative that created a ton of buzz. So help us, help us understand when we're thinking about what's in the ocean, we're thinking about plastics, help us make that leap of here's what's actually going on. Here's, here's what we're taking from the ocean or here's what we're taking from the land. Here is the recyclable that we're utilizing and here's how it impacts like. Help me make that leap.

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eric (06:41.662)

It's a journey for all of us. Like you and I were talking before the show started about like your journey. It's like you weren't aware that 70 % of what you wear is made from petroleum based products. And you know, that's called that's called nylons. It's called synthetics. It's called it's called polyester. It's called a lot of different things. It all stands for things that come from a petroleum based feedstock. And so fashion has really jumped on that bandwagon because that's how everything can get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, not just cheaper in cost, but cheaper in quality. And I get really tired of people saying, you know, oh yeah, fashion is so cheap, it's so cheap, it's so affordable, synthetic is so cheap. It's not cheap. It's actually costing us lives. Because if you look at the data and everything, all these things are breaking down into microplastics, nanoplastics, they're entering into our bodies through the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. And some of us are consuming up to a credit card worth of plastics a week. And now the studies are showing us that this is causing havoc in our bodies. It's entering our arteries where it's causing clots. It's entering our brains where it's causing Alzheimer and dementia. It's entering our, it's 10 times more prevalent in placentas. Now placentas only are there for nine months. Think about what the baby now is now experiencing as they ingest what's coming in from their mother on a nutrient basis. So I just want to put that aside as a quick education.

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As much as what you think you eat at the grocery store is important, what you wear is just as important. And my journey on that was like any of yours that your listeners are having right now. I had no idea. I was part of a, I had a storied 26 year career in Adidas. I helped make stuff and helped get cheaper stuff made in Asia. And only did I wake up back towards when I was the grand president in 2014 when Parley for the Oceans came in my office and said, Hey, would you like to save the oceans? And I was like, yeah, sure. But what does that have to do with selling more shoes and apparel? And they slowly educated me on, well, you're contributing to the problem with the oceans by making all these synthetic products that then basically leach microfibers, nanofibers that are, you know, synthetics are primarily forever materials. Once you make them, they never go away. They're hundreds and hundreds of years. So even though it leaves your closet, it goes somewhere else and just starts to shed out into our, whether it be a landfill or whether it be just in the ground, that then starts to shed into micros and nanoplastics that then start to contribute to more and more detriment to people that consume it like ourselves. But you have to kind of go on that journey. So it's ending up in the oceans, it's ending up in our water supplies, it's ending up in the ground and it's breaking down, but it is a forever material and the federal materials just enter into the food chains, which then cause havoc in living organisms like ourselves.

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Tom Finn (09:31.896)

So I want to go back to this, this term that you've used a couple of times, and I want to make sure I heard it correctly because you're, you're saying it really quickly. Parley for the Oceans.

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eric (09:42.141)

Yeah, Parley for the Oceans is a ocean advocacy group, basically, that brings attention to these matters in the state of the oceans, whether it be the rising water temperatures or whether it be the plight of the fish stocks or whether it be the acidity of the oceans. But what they brought to us at Adidas was the knowledge of ocean plastics. And they helped to really galvanize the knowledge and understanding of what ocean plastics are not just doing to the health of the oceans and the organisms that live there, but what they ultimately do to us as they educate me very quickly, every second breath we take comes from the oceans. So if we start to hurt the nutrient cycle in the oceans that's producing all of this oxygen for us, we're actually hurting ourselves. So again, it's a longer, more complex, nuanced story than that, but those are some high level takeaways.

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Tom Finn (10:37.624)

So you're at Adidas, you're going through this personal process. You're trying to figure out how do I make a bigger impact? So how did you make that leap to leave and start your own company?

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eric (10:50.206)

Yeah, so first of all, for a guy that loves sport, loves thinking about sport, doing sport, having done sport, you know, it made me bounce. It made me happy. I think I had the best job in the world. But these guys from Parley put this information in my head in 2014. And so then I jumped on it and at Audi, I did everything I did. I picked a fight with plastic, right? We're going to do everything. We're going to eliminate plastic bags at retail. We're going to eliminate plastic bottles on campuses. We're going to eliminate… plastic beads in our beauty care. We're going to eliminate, we're going to get off of, this is a moonshot we gave ourselves. We're going to get off of virgin polyester feedstock, again, the stuff you make product from by 2024. We did all that. I mean, well, I left before 2024, but they honored that through. And so everything Adidas has made out of recycled polyester, which is a great first step. 

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But when you start hearing and understanding the real plight of the oceans and then you helicopter up to really the plight of plastics in the in the in the fashion industries reliance on these petroleum based products that are forever materials that never go away you can only whisper yourself to sleep so often, you know, you know, it's like you can't unhear and see what you've heard and seen so At the end of 2019 I was 52 years old I had you know climbed the mountain of Adidas and I said, you know, if not now when if not you who? I think I need to go outside and really try to disrupt the entire fashion industry by pioneering this regenerative fashion concept, which is basically simply making things out of plants and minerals that harmlessly go away when you're done using them. And so what we've done with Unlust Collective is we've built everything from plants and minerals, and we've modeled everything from knits and wovens, hoodies and t-shirts and jackets to socks and shoes and we've said all these things can be made with the right brief and the right approach with your engineers and designers out of plants and minerals. You do not need to use petroleum based products that cause havoc on the world when you're done using it. Even though it's cheaper. It's cheaper to use polyester. It's cheaper to use petroleum. It's not better and it's actually long -term not cheaper because it's actually causing you your health.

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Tom Finn (13:09.08)

So I want to double down on something you just said, which is such an entrepreneurial comment. If not now, when, if not me, who, who's going to do this work and when's it going to be done if it's not me? And most entrepreneurs hold themselves accountable to a higher standard than the rest of the market. And what I'm hearing you say is you went through that personal process to really figure out, you know what? This is my time. This is my time to step up put this thing on my shoulders and walk the path.

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eric (13:20.254)

Yep. Yeah. I mean, I feel, I feel like you're a hundred percent correct. So a couple of things there, um, because I'm a, I'm not your typical 22 year old garage startup, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a senior, you know, 30 year industry veteran. I've, I've, I've had my time in the, I've built my career up and I had some success where I have some financial stability and I can afford to be very pure and very driven. And I do believe, and this is something I've heard you talk about in your previous podcast, having a purpose, having a higher calling in life can really resonate with your, not just your yourself, your family, your employees and your consumers. It's like trying to really set a real stretch goal in your upper right hand corner of your whiteboard and say that's the destination we're going to. You know, we're going to, we're going to create a, a, a industry where it systemically changes industry and get it off of these, these poisonous chemicals and feedstocks. And so we're going to create a brand that's very tightly focused on no harmful waste to end of life. Right? It's a very specific brief because that's how designers and engineers think. They need a brief and then the world can innovate against it. But you need that clear brief to go after it. And it wasn't going to happen at Adidas. 

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And a lot of people ask me that, why didn't you just stay at Adidas? Because Adidas has a million priorities and there's a lot of mouths to feed and you've got to manage to 30 or 60 or 90 day return, you know, earnings and you have to really manage the public company. You have to finish your responsibility to make sure your business keeps going up with your bottom line. And we could talk forever about that. And we did what we could and we moved the needle as much as we could. But I learned from Parley example, when I brought Parley inside, which by the way, Parley scaled to, I'm guessing over a billion dollars worth of business for Adidas today. So it's really scaled up really nicely and saying, okay, what if I go outside with a less and I create this better way, this pioneering, this way of regenerative fashion.

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And then I can go back into the bigs as a partner, as a collaborator, as an instigator to try to get them to scale this with the urgency of the world and the people need to see. Because ultimately we're not really focused on creating generational wealth for a few of us with a new brand. The world doesn't need a new brand. What we need to do is scale it as a lighthouse, a pioneer for others to then to follow or join with to really scale this with the urgency that we can systemically change the industry. I take a lot of learnings from that with the Tesla example with electric vehicles or the plant -based proteins example with Oatly with how they've scaled different kind of milks. So there's learnings out there and case studies that I've looked at and studied really hard to apply that then say, okay, fashion needs this. What's next? Toys need this. Beauty needs this. There's so many industries that need this kind of disruption, this kind of approach with a tightly scripted breed.

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Tom Finn (16:31.192)

Alright, so let's play devil devil's advocate here. What do you say when somebody says, okay, hippie? Look, I want my cheap clothes on Amazon. I want to be able to buy nice suits at Nordstrom. And I want to be able to do all of that at an affordable price.

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eric (16:50.494)

Yeah, it's a real thing. And that's why everything we do, first of all, thank you for the hippie comment. Not going to bite on that. Listen, we're very intentional that we're not making fair trade here. We're not making something where we're wagging our finger at you saying, you should feel guilty about buying stuff. Stop buying things, consumer. It's like, no. No, we believe we have to meet them where they don't sacrifice their taste for their values, nor their values for their taste. We have to come to where the consumer is today. I'm long enough in fashion to understand that you cannot, you're not going to teach consumers new behaviors, but you can make better things for them to consume. So we take a rigorous approach to unit economics. And what I mean by that is you cannot ask the consumer to pay exorbitantly more. So everything we're applying to this has the ability, and this is where my innovation background comes in. Anybody can make one of one. You can make, you know, you can make one of one. You can make. You can go to a laboratory and make one thing of one thing. It doesn't matter what the cost is. And you can say, look, I have a prototype of that one thing. It's really hard to get unique economics at scale. 

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So every time I was at, when I was in Adidas or when I'm in a less, when we look at innovations, when we look at new materials, when we look at solutions that we're trying to have, whether it be glues or leathers or whatever it may be that are substitutes for existing, the existing products on the shelf, we have to say, okay, does this give us the, you know, parity of pricing from a cost standpoint, or does it have the ability to get there in three to five years based on scale? So everything we're applying right now has that ability to get there within three to five years with the necessary scale, which is why the model we're doing it unless is like, hey, we want to build that Lighthouse brand. 

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But to your point, we know we're not going to compete with your, you know, your she and t -shirt or your, or your North from suit today. We won't do that until we partner up with the bigs to scale our volume. And the big guys will come on board and partner with us because the story is so rich, they're going to win the consumers because the consumer is going to demand this and policy is going to enforce this. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We'll be there with the ready-made solutions so that we can give it to them because we figured out all the different pieces of here's the materials, here's where you got to make it, here's how you make it, here's how you print it, here's how you dye it, here's how you deliver it, here's how you collect it. Here's how you put it back in the graph. That regenerative creation model, we've modeled out now over the past few years. So we're able to plug and play different partnerships into that, which then we can get more efficiencies, which you can get our cost down, which can give you what you want if you're not a hippie that likes to pay more.

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Tom Finn (19:28.408)

Yeah, you got to throw the hippie context in the conversation, right? Look, for those that are thinking about unit economics, Eric's making some very strategic points here that need to be explained a little bit. So what he's talking about is scalability within a product suite, which allows you to take a product, not being a one of one, scale it to something meaningful and have an economic model that allows the cost to go down as the scale goes up, not the cost to go up as the scale goes up. That is the critical math that has to work for something like this to be mainstream. Would you agree?

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eric (20:13.086)

100%. I mean, you summed it up a lot better than I did, but that's why you're sitting on the other side of the mic.

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Tom Finn (20:19.288)

Well, I appreciate that. It's very kind of you. Look, I think it's fantastic. What I did hear you say is I don't want to compete with the largest brands in the world. I want to show them the path and partner. Did I capture that correctly?

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eric (20:36.606)

Yeah. I mean, I think that's the uniqueness of our model. And again, I've learned, I've applied that from my days at Adidas because some of our best things were these open source type of approaches, you know, whether it be the Kanye West story where, you know, listen, we kind of said, hey, say what you will about Ye, right? He's a creator. He's a genius creator. And, you know, that doesn't mean it doesn't come with some sort of, you know, some sort of cost to his personal being, but he taught… Adidas how to create in a more in a different way of thinking and I think we embrace that we did the same thing with 3d printing when we partnered with carbon carbon 3d Which is a real the largest 3d manufacturer in the world for a period of time there because we're making so many shoes off of Digital light synthesis, which is if you don't know about it, it's fantastic.

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 We did the same thing with parley for the oceans They each these outside in collaborations all helped us be a better brand that helped us produce those results that you spoke about earlier in the introduction you don't get 8 billion growth in sales by standing flat footed. You have to lean into doing new and different things. And so what I kind of took away from that was, okay, what if I'm one of those outside disruptors? What if I'm one of those people that, but I do it with a sustainability tape. What if I do it from a regenerative standpoint? What can I offer the big companies that they would need from me that they can't do themselves? And what I offer them is innovation that's on consumer desire that addresses policies that are being made that has the unit economic approach that can be accretive to their bottom line, their top and bottom line, as we scale this thing. And it gives them one hell of a cool story to tell because all of our product, and we like to show it in these forms, it goes away within, if you put it in industrial comp roaster, it goes away within two weeks. 

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Now, if you put it in your backyard, based on where you live, I live in the Oregon coast, it may go a little faster than the high desert of Oregon. But it's like, it compares to an oak tree at that point. It's just cellulose -based material, which is plant -based material. It goes away, and the natural enzymes and environment will eat it naturally. Now, if you want to accelerate it, we have a partnership with Agrimon, which is the largest industrial composter in California. They make our stuff go away really fast. So give the product back to us, and we'll send it down to them, and they'll make it go to nutrient -rich soil within two weeks.

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Tom Finn (22:52.952)

So when you talk about plant and mineral based clothing, I visualize you picking leaves off a tree and somehow stitching them together with sticks and stones and building me the most uncomfortable shirt that could ever be worn. Help me get the right frame of reference on what this really looks like.

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eric (23:03.454)

Yeah. Well, think about cotton, think about linen, think about hemp, think about bamboo. All these materials are in your everyday solutions. They're in your product that you shop. It's a question of what's the percentage. So a lot of times, one of the more comfortable shirts you may wear is going to be like 30 % cotton, 30 % polyester, 30 % nylon, so it has a little stretch and you feel good in it. We make… in my opinion, and it's, you know, it's, it's not, maybe not the most objective, the most comfortable t -shirt you're ever going to wear because it's a hundred percent cotton. It feels good, but you also have the knowledge it's there. So even the way we printed it and dyed it, it is, it is, you know, it's, it's not going to shed anything harmful into your environment that your kids or your family need to need to need to breathe or drink or eat in. So to me, it's about using the set that has been made already from a, from a plant standpoint, and that just cotton has been something.

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I've inherited my parents' clothing for years, and it's been cotton, wool, or leather-based, right? So these natural materials have existed. They predate plastics. They predate polyesters. We just got away from them because the cost, the unit economics of polyesters is so much cheaper. But what we have now is we have to go back a little bit and remember what we knew once upon a time. But the other question I get, and before you get there, Tom, is, you know, is it going to biodegrade in my washing and drying machine? And the answer is quite clear, at least no. Our stuff will not, you know, to decompose or to biodegrade, you need certain temperature, you need certain pressure, you need certain moisture, and then the enzymes can come in there and start to eat at it. So we cook all of our own stuff and call it cooking in our rotary composter at our office. And yeah, it takes quite a bit to get the stuff to go to get eaten or cooked down to back to being dirt. So it's not going to happen unless you want it to. It's going to wear as long as it's going to be as comfortable and it lasts as long as anything you have in your closet. And I would say it's even going to be better because the cheap stuff, polyester, will start to pill and start to fall apart much quicker, even though the material never goes away.

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Tom Finn (25:29.144)

So in its simplest form, 100 % cotton t-shirt fits the bill here. If it's 100 % cotton, that is the type of thing we should be thinking about as consumers.

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eric (25:40.382)

Yes, and unfortunately, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission doesn't really care about the layboying accuracy. So you can call your shirt 100 % cotton, even if it's only 66 % cotton. And what I mean by that is they care about the base material and they'll say, okay, that needs to be primarily 100 % cotton, but your trims, your details, your prints, the way you put the product together with your stitching.

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All that thing, all that can be nylons and synthetics and that's where you get into more blend. Your labels, they can all be blended. So ultimately, if you have a 66 % cotton t -shirt, you can call it 100 % cotton. So I would just advise caution if you care about this topic and you've listened in this far into the podcast and you do, that I would just exercise caution on what you really want to and do some research on the brands. Cause there's always a lot of people trying to take shortcuts and say, Hey, we're plant -based, but it's just like 20 % cotton or 30 % cotton. And then, so we always joke and say, if you're a vegan, would you eat an 80 % vegan hot dog? Probably not. So if you care about wearing what's better for you and the world and your family, you probably want to be more diligent in what the percentages really are and not just believe every label. So you have to do a little bit of research.

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Tom Finn (27:04.536)

So when we think about your business, Eric, the Unless Collective, where is it in terms of the scale? Because you've got, look, you've gone from being high end, big brand, global executive, pushing billions of dollars in sales, and now you're mission driven, entrepreneur, focused on the environment, thinking about your kids, trying to make the world a better place. Where are you guys in your evolution?

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eric (27:16.958)

Yeah. Yeah, so great question. And thanks for asking that. You know, I always joke, I've gone from the penthouse, which I was super happy with to the outhouse. And I'm actually super happy there too. But all that aside, I think the pieces are this. So we, we, we spent the last three and a half years building a, a, a lighthouse brand. Right. So we have, like I said, we've got everything from, from beanies to bucket hats, to t-shirts, to crew necks, to hoodies, to woven jackets to pants, to socks, to shoes. So we've modeled everything from a woven to a knit apparel piece, including socks which have stretch, which every time you see stretch, you typically have to think that's a melted plastic. We made our socks out of mechanical stretch with natural rubber latex, and then we made shoes, which is really hard to solve for because you can't use glues, you can't use foams, so you got a lot of different pieces there. So we modeled all that up. We spent a lot of money doing that over the last three and a half years, but super proud to have that. The next step now is to really start to scale that with expanding our distribution, expanding our audience, expanding our partnerships. So now we're talking to some of the other players in the industry that are quite a bit larger than us, but we're also talking to wholesalers and we're in the midst of that right now. I'd say we're available on direct to consumer on lesscollective.com.

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We're opening up shops as we speak and we're onboarding sales staff as we speak to try to further this message. We're looking at expanding to Europe in the coming and by the end of this year. So we've got a lot of pieces in place. We are, and we are talking to, like I said, brands from different sectors in the industry. And ultimately that's where we'll see the most growth, I think in the next 12 to 24 months, because the last three years have really been a build and now we were positioned now to grow both from a direct to consumer wholesale and partnership standpoint.

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Tom Finn (29:30.456)

So when you talk about partnerships, I want to dig in there a little bit. When you talk about partnerships, what actually happens in the structure of that deal? And here's what I mean. Do you pull off your logo and put on their logo and use your manufacturing and your design and those types of things, and now it's somebody else's logo and you're behind the scenes? Or is there some other way these deals get cut in terms of a partnership?

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eric (29:36.03)

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think there's two models there. I frame them up as a CoLab model, which is, you know, it can be Mammut by Unless, which we've done before, which is a Swiss brand, Swiss climbing brand, which we've done really cool in those collections we've put out there. We've got a few more like that, which is basically like, we're bringing our audience, we're bringing our know -how to Mammut. They're bringing their audience, their know -how. We're collaborating for a better world.

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And we're celebrating that through graphics on existing product or creating new bespoke product together. Right. And that can happen with anybody from Gap, H &M, Zara to Nike, Adidas, New Balance, you know, under, I mean, it can happen to the whole world of fashion brands out there. And we're open to have those conversations. Furthermore, to your point of an Intel inside type of ingredient. Yes, we're open to that as well. We've done some things with like Robert Downey Jr. where we've provided product for his dream cars, merchandise, where we basically take a back seat. We use our blanks, but it's really about Robert Downey Jr. and the Footprint Coalition celebrating those aspects of that partnership where they can buy those things from us.

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We actually do the printing to make sure we still stay plastisol free, and then we ship it to their consumers as they have it. And so that's also a fruitful enterprise for us as well. So again, both those avenues are open. One's more of a, hey, we're partly for the oceans times Adidas type of model and one's more. Hey, here's a B2B solution. Now the B2B thing is, is, uh, is interesting because there's never been a really regenerative offer in that world before. That's where the economics get really tough because you know, you've got some players that are selling $3 t -shirts and, uh, it's hard to match those price points at this point. But like I said, never say never. And a lot of people want this story. So it's a, it's a, you know, Robert Downey's, um, obviously a, um, um, a very core leader to sustainability. He's funded a venture capital fund called Footprint where they invest in just sustainable solutions. So he's all about this topic. So of course he's going to be on the one end of making sure his product he offers is very, very sustainable, very green. And there's the other end where people just want to have blanks. And that's a different answer. So we're more of a premium blank solution, I would say.

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Tom Finn (32:23.768)

Yeah, it sounds that way. And I'm sort of thinking now about competition. And are you facing a lot of competition in your particular vertical? Set all the big brands aside for a second. I'm talking, you know, no plastics, no petroleum, you know, really focused on.

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eric (32:36.382)

Yeah. No, there's, there's, there's like, there's a lot of people that say we're sustainable. Like everyone's screaming they're sustainable because it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's trendy. Um, I always caution people and say, Hey, what is, what do you mean by that? And so, cause there's so many different ways to say you're sustainable. It's like, Oh, I can mean, I'm using recycled polyester. I'm using ocean plastic. Um, my life cycle analysis is cheap, is lower than others. I'm using bio plastics. I'm using bio fabrication. So there's a lot of words out there that are really, from a consumer standpoint, you almost need a PhD to work through them at depth. So to me, it's like, our story is so simple. Our story is regenerative. That's why we kind of stay away from the term sustainable. It's like regenerative has a very clear connotation. It means it adds value to the environment when you're done with it. It doesn't extract, it doesn't hurt. And to do that, it's really hard because we have to go the full… the full mile, if you will, we have to do this last. The last parts are always the hardest. People say we're 90 % plant-based. Well, the 10 % is where the hard stuff is, right? Anybody can be 90%, but it's that, it's that extra 10 % that really matters. So I would say I have not come across too many brands, if any, that are at this, at this, you know, that's this kind of diligence. And again, it goes back to our history. The co -founders and I have experience working in the industry for 20, 30 years. And we've made our livings in that regard. And this is kind of our play it forward. This is like, what is our legacy? What is seven generations going to say about us? So we're trying to fix the problems we saw. And so we don't want to take any half steps. We don't want to take any compromises. And because we're not taking any, we can be very pure where others cannot maybe because they basically cannot afford to take these kind of pure routes that we are. There might be one or two out there, but… I don't see them as competitors, I see them as collaborators and conspirators. I think to change this industry, it's gonna take a village. And so we're constantly talking to people that have the same mission alignment as we do.

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Tom Finn (34:47.)

Look, that's a huge phrase that you ended with mission alignment. Uh, and when you're doing something like this in, uh, such a heavy industry, um, as fashion, right? I mean, fashion is a global industry. It doesn't just touch one person. It touches all of us around the world. It's a global business.

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eric (35:05.278)

Yep. It's pretty true. $2 trillion a year. It's massive.

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Tom Finn (35:11.224)

Yeah, there's there's some real math behind it. That's for sure. I love that you're building this mission driven purpose driven philosophy, because you can bring all the other boats with you. If you can make that tide rise, you can lift up all the other folks in the industry. I just I wonder when you're sitting around, you know, having a cup of tea or a cold beer with some of your buddies at the big brands, because you know, that's the way the world works. You know, all of them.

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eric (35:39.646)

It's a slow world.

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Tom Finn (35:41.176)

Yeah, they've been your friends for 20 or 30 years and you're sitting around and they're, they're talking about the latest thing they're doing at Nike or Adidas or whatever, the other big H and M, whatever the brands are. And you're going, man, I'm just grinding my tail off over here, trying to do the right thing. Like what, what does that conversation look like? Are they jealous that you took the leap of faith or are you thinking, man, it'd be nice to be back in that cozy leather first-class seat flying, flying around the world.

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eric (36:06.334)

Uh, good question. That's a good question. I'll have to start to interrogate some of those guys, um, about that. But I think, listen, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I'd do it. I'd say a couple of things. I'd say startup life is not for everybody. And I have learned more in the last four years than I learned in decades before. I mean, not to say the Adidas time wasn't a great learning curve, but the acceleration of what you're learning by what you're doing and going through. Each and every day is, is massive and it's, it's, it's not for the faint of heart. And it's, uh, you have to be ready for, you know, the world that awaits you, which is you don't have the executive suite. You don't have all the things that come with that. The teams, the support mechanism mechanisms, the, it's just you and your core team. And you know, today, this weekend, I'll be going to one moto, a motorcycle show and we're, we're, we're sponsoring a bunch of skaters. They're going to be at the skate ramp and BMXers. It'll be me. I'll be there with Tony or Anthony. And it's just like, it'll be him and I, and we'll be working the booth and telling the story and carrying the flag up the hill. It's like that. And indeed is, I never worked in an event. So when you, when you ask me if guys are jealous that I took the leap, I think they're pretty happy where they are because I think they, if they don't recognize the time commitment, the stress commitment, the cashflow, all the different things that go into it. I think that they're pretty happy where they are. Having said all that. It's giving me more freedom to do what I want to do and be more present with my family than I can work around me a little bit knowing that it's not going to be any no days a day off, but it's going to be it's going to be my time. And I live my life on a term that you may like, which is zero wasted hours. So when you're in the big company, you have a lot of meeting cultures and a lot of obligations to fulfill. And when you come outside that you can say, if I'm not doing something for myself, my family, my friends, or my community, my community or my world. I'm not doing it. And I live that each and every day for the last four years. And it's like, it comes with a great editing, um, you know, basis because you can decide whether I'm going to be this, do this podcast or not. How's this going to help, you know, me, me lean into those things and each and every decision tree comes down to those questions. So I think, um, I love it because I'm living a hundred percent purpose driven life. And I think I wasn't able to do that all the time at Adidas. Even though I had one hell of a time and I don't regret a day in my life, but it's a, it's a, it's an evolution, right? We're all on a journey of life.

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Tom Finn (38:39.352)

So well said, you have to live your life by your design, not the design of whim or the design of others who put you in particular jobs or roles or countries. You have to design the life with intention that you want. And it sounds like Eric, you have very much figured that out and are designing a life for yourself, your family, but also helping the rest of us learn and be educated around what type of clothes we should be wearing and how we should be treating the earth and how we should be looking at that from a much more global scale than perhaps you know I thought of before we had this chat so I thank you my man I thank you for the work that you're doing the leap of faith that you took to believe in yourself and for the great work that your team is gonna do at Unless Collective.

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eric (39:28.19)

Appreciate you, Tom. I appreciate those words. They mean a lot. And I think you have to live your life with purpose. And I think the future and what I've, I'll just, I'll just, uh, add this to what you said. It's like, if you do that, everyone else leans in and I can, when you give that purpose or that permission to live with purpose at a big company like Adidas, you can't believe the employee reaction. I mean, the recruitment reaction, the employee reaction, of course it worked with the consumers, but I wasn't prepared quite honestly for the employees because ultimately when you live in a big company, employees are your consumers, consumers are your employees. And caring about something like Ocean Plastic really galvanized everyone. And it was amazing to see, it was amazing to watch. I just let go, I just started a little snowflake on top of the hill and it rolled downhill. So what we're trying to do with Unles is doing it in a much more macro scale. We're just trying to be that snowflake up on the hill and give permission to people to live a more… purpose-driven life by supporting brands that are living, that are building things the right way, the way each of us want to buy them.

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Tom Finn (40:34.072)

Yeah, beautifully said. And you can collect new clothing from Unless Collective at UnlessCollective.com. I'm looking at it right now. You can shop all you got tees, hoodies, shorts, pants, jackets, flannels, shirts, sneakers. We got it all. So check it out. And then we'll, we'll keep an eye out for some of your additional partnerships that I'm sure will be coming out in the next few months and years as you grow those deals globally. How can people get in contact with you, Eric? They want to check you out. Obviously, they can get some merch on your website, but how can they get in contact with you?

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eric (41:08.03)

Yeah. Personally, I try to stay in touch with anybody that reaches out. You can hit me at Eric Liedtke on Instagram, or you can hit me on LinkedIn. So to me, it's happy to hear from anybody with any ideas or thoughts or opportunities.

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Tom Finn (41:25.688)

Awesome, and we'll put that in the show notes. Thanks for the great work you're doing. We're huge cheerleader here just rooting you on on your path. And I know you're going to do great things. This is going to scale beautifully the way that you're modeling it. So congratulations on your future success as well as your present.

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eric (41:42.686)

Thanks, Tom. Appreciate the time and the opportunity to come on your show. Take care.

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Tom Finn (41:46.008)

Thank you, my friend.