Dear Mr. Bezos,

We recently saw a product Amazon makes and sells that is strikingly similar to our Wool Runner. Last week, we were asked by Christiane Amanpour about this, and whether we’d been in touch to make sure that you are aware of our open-sourced, sustainable technologies and their applicability to your product. The prompt felt fair, and we hope this reaches you.

We are flattered at the similarities that your private label shoe shares with ours, but hoped the commonalities would include these environmentally-friendly materials as well. Alas, we’re here to help. As we’ve done with over 100 other brands who were interested in implementing our renewable materials into their products, including direct competitors, we want to give you the components that would make this shoe not just look like ours, but also match our approach to sustainability.

In partnership with Braskem, we successfully created the world’s first green EVA — a sustainable version of the foam used on the bottoms of sneakers (including yours), and one of the industry’s most ubiquitous materials. By using a sugarcane waste stream, not only were we able to create a natural version of what has historically been petroleum-derived, but we’re also removing carbon from the atmosphere and locking it away with one of the most photosynthetically-efficient crops, fighting climate change in the process.

After all this work, we decided to give it away.

You can use it. We want you to use it. If you replaced the oil-based products in your supply chain with this natural substitute (not just for one product, but all of them), we could jointly make a major dent in the fight against climate change. With the help of your immense scale, the cost of this material will come down for all users of this material, allowing for even broader adoption.

We’re happy to send samples of our SweetFoam™, or put you in touch with our partner to learn more.

Customers value companies that are mindful of the planet and profits, and we believe the most powerful businesses in the world, such as Amazon, should lead on these issues, and will be rewarded for doing so.

Please steal our approach to sustainability.

Sincerely,
Joey and Tim