How I Built This with Guy Raz - HIBT Lab! UNLESS Collective: Eric Liedtke

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Eric Liedtke spent 26 years at Adidas, working his way up from an entry level position to Executive Board Member and Global Brand President. During that time, he helped revitalize the Adidas brand through high profile partnerships with celebrities like Kanye West and Beyonce. But he was also known for his focus on sustainability. It was Eric who pushed Adidas to commit to using only 100% recycled polyester in its clothing by 2024. This week on How I Built This Lab, Eric joins Guy to talk about the environmental impact of the fashion industry. Eric shares why he left Adidas and started his own apparel brand, UNLESS Collective, which makes 100% plant-based, biodegradable clothing.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So we're releasing this additional brand new episode of how I built this lab today. And if you haven't heard the lab, well, think of it kind of like a sandbox where we explore all sorts of big ideas connected to entrepreneurship. Anyway, we'll have another lab episode out this Thursday. And then next week we'll be back to our regular schedule of releasing a new episode of how I built us on Mondays and how I built this lab on Thursdays. Thank you so much for your support and understanding. Now, on to the show. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. Today's guest is Eric Leibke. He's spent nearly 30 years working for Adidas, which is actually how it's pronounced.

It's one of the biggest sportswear and apparel companies in the world, and he started there in an entry-level job in the 1990s, eventually making his way up to the executive board and becoming global brand president. It was actually Eric who pushed the company to partner with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, leading to collaborations with Kanye West and Beyonce, and along the way, he helped revitalize the Adidas brand. But while he was climbing that corporate ladder, Eric also came to see the environmental impact of the fashion industry. So much of the performance sports apparel Adidas is known for,

the shoes and t-shirts and running shorts and backpacks and water bottles. It's all mostly made from plastic, which eventually becomes plastic waste in our landfills and oceans. and rivers and lakes. So Eric began pushing Adidas to make their clothing more sustainable, using more recycled materials, including recycled plastics recovered from the world's oceans. But that wasn't enough.

So in 2019, Eric left one of the biggest jobs at one of the biggest brands in the apparel industry to start his own clothing company, unless collective, which makes clothing entirely from plant-based materials, no plastic at all. So at the end of that t-shirt or jacket's life, it can actually decompose. Eric Leedkey, welcome. Thanks so much for being on the show.

Great to be here. All right, 26-year career at Adidas, and what you really became known for was an obsessive focus on sustainability. So first of all, when we think about the apparel industry, right, not many of us think about sustainability. And Adidas, one of the biggest apparel makers in the world, tell me how. you know how you sort of had this kind of epiphany that that things had to change while you were there yeah i i guess it goes just to give you a little context um we were doing a a turnaround for the brand uh the brand had fallen to you know um its lowest level in years it was that the share price was trading in the fifty dollar range wow um investors were up in arms um activists were warming up

The press was calling for our CEO's head, and it was kind of a tumultuous time. And instead, Herbert Heiner, the CEO at the time, didn't decide to, you know, step, step away. He decided to change up the board. And that's when I came into the board. And what he looked at me, he said, hey, you need to reset the brand. And whatever you do, don't ask for permission. Just ask for my advice. And with that, I kind of got to work.

Because those are words I actually live by to this day because I really I really like that kind of attitude. But anyway, with that we got to work and we really became a much more consumer-oriented brand than we ever been before and really focused on, you know, through sport, how can we change lives? And really took that on to ourselves. And so when we looked at that, of course, as a sports brand, you want to make product that can, you know, run faster, jump higher, do whatever the sport necessities are. but we recognize that the culture of sport doesn't stop when you leave the playing field, when you leave the court. It goes into the stands. It goes into the hallways.

It goes into the music venues. So we started to unlock that potential of the brand. And that's where things like Kanye West came in or Beyonce and those things kind of added into the brand. But then the third thing we kind of looked is like, you know, the world is kind of a tumultuous place. And it's on 24-7 with our consumers. So if you're focusing on your consumer, it's like, yeah, you have to care about helping

them in sport. And yes, you have to be relevant in the culture of sport, but you also have to kind of make the world a better place for them. And how do we do that through sport? And so we started to tackle some big social or climate issues. And the one that really hit home to me was the impact that the fashion industry has on the environment. And, you know, once you see and once you hear the degradation of the planet and fast fashions, planned obsolescence contribution to that,

you can't unsee and unhear that. So I really just committed myself, committed the brand to, you know, to changing that. And I'm super proud of what we did there. But also, you know, kind of flipped a switch in my head and knew that this was going to be my life's calling. I remember because I've seen you talk about this, of course, and we've met in the past. And something that you would say is there is enough plastic in the world to fulfill all of our new plastic needs for the next 50 years or something like that. I mean, if we were to recycle all of it. Yeah, it's what I like the term is, plastic is a forever material, which means there's not a piece of plastic that's ever been created that's not still with us today in some shape or form.

Wow. So, you know, if you think about in plastics, it's kind of a recent invention, if you will, really, really didn't come up until, you know, the late 30s and really started to hit its heyday in the 50s. And it was a miracle material. Unfortunately, it's, it's very good. And so it just doesn't go away. And yeah, I think in the fashion space, you've got arguably 60 to 70 percent depending on what brand and what performance features you're looking for are made out of polyester, which is a form of plastic. And that's also a forever material that never goes away. Yeah.

I actually went on a school field trip with my son and his class to a recycling plant before the pandemic. And I remember thinking about you because I was seeing all this plastic there, knowing that plastic. is really, really hard to recycle, and very few recycling plants have the capacity to do it. Why is it so harder to just recycle it and reuse it? Well, there's tons of data on that. First of all, there's plastic probably recycling has been propped up by the big plastic companies. To make you think that it's all recycling. Correct.

The joke of the magic triangle with the arrows showing that, hey, this is recyclable. And in essence, it's not. I mean, it depends on where you are and where you live and what your recycling center takes. But I'm living in Portland, Oregon, which is probably one of the highest or more advanced recycling areas. And they take ones or twos, if you have a one in your pyramid or two. And those are basically, that's really the two plastics they take. And the numbers of plastics go up to nine and the other seven are not taken. And they're just taken to landfills or burned.

And even when you do recycle plastic, it does. it can create toxic fumes, right? Can create emissions. Absolutely. I mean, there is no way with plastic. You either put it in the ground, you put it in the air, you put it in the ocean, but it still lives and it still destroys. So, you know, if you burn it, which people think, oh, it's burned, it's gone away, it doesn't.

It just goes up in the air and rains back down on us. So they're finding microplastics, which are the tiny, you know, cellular level plastics. Yeah. They're finding them everywhere from the, you know, the Mariana Trench. the deepest part of the ocean to the to Mount Everest. And the density and the amount of it is just going up and up and up. And it's in our bodies. It's in our bodies.

It's in our blood. It's in our organs. It's in the placentas of pregnant women. It's in our fetuses. It's everywhere. You know, you could argue that microplastics, you're eating based upon your diet, you're eating about a credit card worth of microplastics a week. Wow.

And we don't probably don't. don't fully understand the toxicity, you know, the amount of toxins are absorbing in that plastic. Well, I think the research is still being developed. And not the bummer, but yeah, because there are solutions to this, but it's good to get the frame out there. You know, chemicals in plastics, there's like 8,000 chemicals in different plastics. And that's good because it makes them highly adaptive. It makes them highly useful. It makes them highly, you know, lasting forever. But unfortunately, when those chemicals and those plastics are internalized, they can lead to endocrine disruptors impacting fertility. It can create cognitive disorders, heart disease, cancer, you name it.

I think the research is early to your point, but it is, the stuff that's coming out is pretty compelling. And what they're finding is double the amounts in our babies, because when they check their feces, they're finding double amount of microplastic penetration in their children and their babies than they are. adults. So it's even more concerning as it affects our younger generations. All right, stay with us, Eric Leakey. You're listening to High Belt This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and we will be right back with more on this topic. I promise it's going to be a little bit more optimistic in a moment. Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. I'm here with Eric Leakey, founder of Unless Collective, former Global Chief Marketing Officer at Adidas, and he really pushed that company to pursue a

sustainability model. Eric, you had pushed Adidas to set the goal of eliminating virgin polyester from their products that only use recycled plastics by 2024. That's just a couple years away. Do you think that's still an achievable goal? Absolutely. And when I was at Adi, we were right in that frame of 60 to 70 percent of our product being polyester-based. So to get off of the virgin polyester, we thought, okay, let's take the first step, which is recycle polyester, recognizing that that's better, and we're not going to let perfect get in the way better. And from what I hear and what I read, from what Adidas is still doing, is they're honoring that target, and they may even exceed that and hit it in an earlier time frame.

So I'm really proud of them continuing to fight the battle against virgin polyester and hopefully polyester in the future. Right. So, okay, so you're, you were pushing for recycling plastic, for using existing plastic, recycling it, and using it to make products. but plastic is still a problem. I mean, even if it's recycled, it's better because it doesn't, you know, less of it ends up in the ocean. But it's still, and I want to be clear about this. I'm as much of a violator of this as anyone else. I'm wearing clothing with plastic in it now, probably at my glasses, my just looking at my desk, my computer, everything around me. We're addicted to it.

We need it. We are, and there are not a lot of options. It's really difficult to buy sustainable when you talk about. buying a non-plastic product. All right. So clearly now it's plastic that is the problem. But plastic is also this thing that the world depends on. So you left to Adidas after 26 years to go and pursue your own, to kind of, I guess, to put your money where your mouth is, right?

Which is to say, you know, let's experiment. Let's see if you can actually make a brand of clothing without plastics called on less collective. Tell me about it. Yeah, so the Holy Grail was always, can we have something that's, you know, from nature goes back to nature? Yeah. Can we have something that fixes the problem of waste in fashion, which I think is probably the biggest sin? So we can talk about all the issues with microplastics, but I don't think enough companies even give any consideration to what happens their product when you're done using it. Right.

So there are, when you talk about the problem of fashion waste, there's, you know, this problem. Planned obsolescence of fashion coming in and out of seasons every three, six, nine months. Yeah. And where does all that stuff go when it's no longer being worn? And it doesn't go away. We've already established that. You know, it doesn't go harmlessly away. And it also can be just shipped off to, you know, other countries.

And what do they do with it? What happens to it? Is it burned? So 40% is estimated to be unusable. So it goes immediately into landfills, which I'm sure are leaching into. the oceans and are being burned. So it goes right into the air, right into the ground, right into the water. The other 60% I guess is being sold, but it's absolutely devastated the local garment industry. And it's really shocking when you start to look at some of this things.

So you've got this problem of plastics and what happens to the end of life. You've got this problem of fashion waste from clothing and what happens to them. And so to me, those two things are really all that's contributed us to build a better. you know, a better way. And that is marrying the innovation of new material science and, and let's call it, you know, plant-based, 100% plant-based science at this point with great-looking product where the consumer doesn't have to compromise their taste to wear something that's better for the world or compromise their values for their taste. So we really see that as a white spot that hasn't been explored yet. And we're a band of warriors that's really trying to solve

that with the world's first 100% plant-based zero plastic fashion brand. So if I were to distill it down into something sort of simple to understand, could you describe unless collective as an attempt to create not necessarily a fast fashion brand, but a brand where you could come up with many different styles of apparel every month and you could dispose of it and it would disintegrate? 100%. It would decompose or biodegrade, whichever word you want to use, back into the ground that would supply, you know, micro-rich nutrients that you could grow new feedstock from. Compostable clothing. Correct. Wow. It's that simple. So there's no other brand that's trying to do this because it's really hard. And I respect what every other brand is trying to do in a sustainable space. But we do things a little bit differently because we like, to start with the end. And we start with the question, what happens this when you're done wearing it? And that's what led us to specifically attack the problem of plastic waste with these plant-based compostable solutions. And I think it's just very important to start with that kind of clear

brief, because otherwise you get lost in the noise of sustainability. And we're very clear in a mission to create zero plastic waste at end of life, which we think is probably the great greatest solution that the fashion industry needs today. If your goal, right, is to help move the industry towards sustainability by, clearly by providing a model and an example, you could arguably have sort of scaled this faster with a, through a massive global brand like Adidas, right, or Nike or or H&M, right, rather than starting your own company from the ground up. So why did you take that approach?

because it is, right, you're starting small, hoping to get big, but, you know, some of these massive brands, they're the ones that are really having the biggest impact, the negative impact and could have a positive impact. Yeah, I think it's a great question and something I slept on for a long time. And I believe I took a sustainability approach as far as I could while sitting in the position I had with Adidas. I think at a certain point, the incumbent companies are complicit in the make-take-and-throwaway culture that we find ourselves in today. And I would only compare it to the auto industry. I think there's no doubt that electric engine technology was available for years to the big players, whether it be Mercedes or Porsche or General Motors or General Motors or. Ford or whoever. You know, and this is where I don't want to cast any judgment, but I think they did as much

as they thought they needed to do to win the consumers. And that was called a hybrid car. Well, I think we've all had experiences hybrid cars, and I don't think they come close to the urgency that was needed. So Tesla came out and built something up that really shook up the world and scared the incumbents. And now everyone has electric car. and the electric car industry is 10 or 15 years ahead of war,

anybody's wild imaginations thought it would be. Yeah. And it doesn't hurt that, you know, the global political situation and how that kind of is feeding into it as well. So I would say the same thing in fashion. It's like you can go to a certain point with the incumbents, but sooner or later the incumbents need to be forced to change from outside in. And I feel like, again, I took it as far as I could when I was in-house.

Right. I did, to your point, entertain, you know, buying a company or injecting myself into a smaller company that I thought could pivot in this direction. But I got tired of waiting and my urgency was too high. And the world's urgency is too great to wait any longer. So I know how hard it is to start a brand. And it's not an easy road. And I can tell you that from my first, you know, from my first months. But it is, it is extremely satisfying and rewarding. And I want to give that option to the consumer. And I think we have to put it back on If the consumer is given the option to buy a better solution, will they?

So, and that's where I think that we have to encourage your listeners and everyone else out there, that, you know, there is a better way. And they need to participate in it because the material solutions are coming. The brands are coming. But they need the help of, you know, consumer conviction to buy into that purpose and buy into those initiatives. Eric, standby. We're going to be back in just a sec. You're listening to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz.

And we'll be back with Eric Lee Kee in just a moment. moment. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So, Eric, let's talk about how unless collective works. You're going to be making streetwear. So I'm assuming t-shirts and jeans or trousers and hats. First of all, how do you make it? What material do you use? You keep saying plant-based. Is it like, I don't know, flax linen? Like, what are you using? Well, I think right now it's the simplest solutions are the easiest. And so from apparel standpoint, we're using cottons, we're using eucalyptus, we're using tensile fibers, things that are readily available for everyone to use. What's different about us is we're looking at everything that goes into it.

And I think that what we're trying to do is really call out some of the gaps in the innovations that are currently in the marketplace. So did you know that 100% cotton, shirt that's labeled 100% cotton doesn't have to be 100% cotton because the guidelines were not set from a sustainability standpoint. They were set from a federal trade commission's standpoint, and it was all about importation duties and things of that nature. So you can label a shirt 100% cotton, and then all of the trims and bindings and closure systems can be plastic, and the consumer would never know the difference. And that's some of the green washing or I like to say green wishing that's going on in our industry that we need to call out. So,

when we when we make something we are talking about everything has been thought through from collars details stitching closures materials finishes dyes inks labels graphics packaging everything is cellulose based which means it's coming from one plant or another could be coming from from tensile which is more a product of wood pulp it could be coming from eucalyptus we become from cotton could be coming from linens and hemp and things it depends on on the little details that we need. And, you know, I just would point out, like, you know, we have, every company who puts labels on their product, but almost 100% of them are petroleum-based or polyester.

We had to go and source a new label that would allow us to, you know, find one from cotton, which is really hard to do because no one's making them anymore because they're... The actual label. Yeah, the little clip tag you might have on the back of your neck or on the clip tag on the bottom on the bottom of your shirt. It's like those things typically are 100% polyester, not ours. But you then had to figure out a new supply chain to find those and then put them together with your cotton shirt manufacturers. Most threads are synthetic because they have higher resiliency. They're more heat conductive so they don't melt under pressure and they're easier to work with.

So most of the supply chains have adapted, you know, synthetic threads now instead of instead of cellulose-based threads. Not us. We had to go out and find cellulose threads that could put our product together when you talk about a T-shirt and how you stitch it together. Wow.

But again, no one else is kind of looking at that. Inks and dyes. Our inks and dyes are 100% water-based and clear of oils and petroleums. We have to, again, find the different suppliers of who can provide those, who can provide those different in methods to apply those inks.

And that means it's a, funny kind of sometimes we get problems with color matching and things like that that we have to correct for so every time we go into a new material it's it's typically a as our craft director paul guy says it's a it's a long dark hallway we embrace that hallway but it requires a lot of good old fashion ingenuity to figure out the solutions of the next genitals and supply chains and how we put it all together yeah that's kind of why we put together the the rock star team that we have. Eric, when it comes to manufacturing the clothing, right?

There is a, there's a whole process involved, right? It's made in a factory. It's packaged. It's shipped. They're all, you know, along that chain beyond just the production and the waste, the local waste and the fact that people throw these items away. There's the shipping costs and so on and the carbon emissions. Can this be made right now?

Can this be produced in the United States? I think it's a, it's a, you know, You've got different things. So let's just break it down. So the cotton we're sourcing for our cut and sew is grown in North Carolina. It is then, unfortunately, having to ship to Korea to be milled because there's no more mills in America. Right. And then it's brought back to America where we can do the cut and sew and we do the dyeing.

So I would say 80% of manufacturers here, one of the things I'm working with because I have grand visions for, you know, not just doing a brand, but also disrupting and creating new supply chains is really bringing milling back. here and using the current administration to really fund some of those things. So we are, we are working with, you know, bringing, you know, cotton mills back to America because that would, that would cut down the big transportation there. Yeah. Our jackets currently are being done out of Portugal, but we are looking at these because it's a woven versus a cotton, cut and so. So the wovans are being done in portuary now just because of the quality and the willingness to work with the material set that we have. But there, we are entertaining conversations. to just as a startup, to your point earlier about, you know, about doing this with existing versus

startups, startups don't have their choice of any factory they want. They've got to, they've got to work with the factories that will work with them and the minimums that they have need to be the appropriate size volumes that we can cater and hope to sell. All right. I'm looking at what's available now. T-shirts, canvas jackets are awesome. Tell me what, in a year's time, what will unless collective look like? What will you be offering? Yeah, well, we want to have, we want to have a proper merchandise collection selection that you can find what you want for your wardrobe and you can be five favorite items made out of, you know, better solution that are just as beautiful and well made. And I think, so we've got hoodies coming out. We've got new t-shirts coming

out, always constant drops. We've got online jackets. We've got bucket hats. We've got footwear on the radar for end of this year. And we've got some workwear shirts and shorts coming. So we've got a a complete range of apparel product coming and footwork on the horizon in the near term. Ultimately, is your goal to turn this into like supreme, that kind of level of brand, but without people even knowing that it's plant-based and zero waste? Because right now, if you look at, I mean, they're awesome. There's some amazing designs. But they are obviously connected and tied to the idea that it's plant-based, you know,

one of the shirts is bury me. So it is connected to the sustainability, message. But down the line, do you want that to kind of drop that and basically have consumers not even know about that? I think ultimately, and this goes into my background, I mean, I've always tried to be at the intersection of material innovation and consumer behavior. Yeah. And I think in my dream that you would not have to talk about sustainability, you could just build a killer brand that was built in a better way. Because I think, Ultimately, the consumer doesn't want to compromise their tastes for their values.

And I think that's where we need to get to in fashion is you need to have that quality of design and a quality of desirability in your product that is second to none and has no compromises because it's plant-based or because it's sustainable. I think too many times we're asking consumers to wear that sustainability on their forehead. And I think that's part of the issues with the scalability of sustainable solutions. And I'll point at Tesla is another great example. It's like you don't have to compromise your driving experience to drive a Tesla, but it's better for the world. And I think that's what fashion needs. That's what many consumer industries need. Eric Leakey, CEO and founder of Unless Collective, thanks so much for being on.

You bet. My pleasure. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at how I built this and mine is at guy ros. And on Instagram, I'm at guy.org. If you want to contact the team, our email address is hibt at ID.wondery.com. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Maggie Luthor.

Our music was composed by Rumpine Arablewey. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Seifer, Josh Lash, and Elaine Coates. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.