During the event Philipp Mayer and Lukas Pünder in their speech showed how entrepreneurship and the sustainable shoe industry can go hand in hand. In 2016, they founded CANO, a startup which sells sustainable and fair produced traditional Mexican leather shoes, the so-called „Huaraches”. The two founders are also working on the topic of transparency and developed retraced, an application, which enables customers to follow every single production and delivery step of the product, through an app. They plan to make this block chain based technical solution also available to other companies.
Professor Dr. Marina-Elena Wachs from Hochschule Niederrhein gave insights into alternative materials in her talk on „The Future of Sustainable Materials – Hypes and Trends”. Among other things, she demonstrated how new textile-like materials can be produced from mushrooms, cork or oranges. Andreas Tepest, Head of Quality Management at Deichmann, introduced „cads,“ a cooperation that has set itself the task of ensuring the quality of footwear and leather goods through defined standards, such as the regulation of pollutants in footwear and leather production.
During a concluding panel discussion Dutch fashion activist and filmmaker Chanel Trapman Mumster, Professor Dr. Marina-Elena Wachs, Lukas Pünder, and Andreas Tepest talked to Monika Hauck about „Changing Consumer Preferences and the Future of the Fashion Industry.“