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Well, it’s not as easy as 1, 2, 3…
It’s been a year now since I came back from my impromptu visit to Porto in Portugal. A beautiful city on the northern coast of Portugal, split by the river leading into the Atlantic Ocean. Rich with history, remnants of discoveries of faraway worlds — and the world’s epicentre for cork.
Although I felt like a complete newbie going on random visits to cork factories around Porto, it was something of my own. Something that I chose to do and that I was going to try out and see if it would have any interest in the world of insoles: sustainable shoe insoles to be exact.
Step 1. Discovery Phase
The first step is always the hardest. It all started with an idea. An idea that soon became notes in Phil Knight’s book Shoe Dog and resulted in booking tickets to Portugal. As my father always says: “An idea is only 1%”. I figured actually flying over to Portugal would account for at least another percent. So I made some preliminary phone calls to factories I found online. I set up five appointments to my surprise.
The goal here was to surpass the ideation. To get over that bump of just dreaming and to actually take matters into my own hands. It was somewhat scary. But I felt so convinced of my idea that I figured “what’s the worst that could happen”. Finding a factory and getting put in touch with a second generation insole manufacturer were the easy parts, looking back at it all read more...
