Almanac

Almanac is a comprehensive approach to rectifying unconscious creation and consumption prevalent in the footwear industry. We provide solutions for the inherited economy of hyperdurable footwear while also cultivating new shoes in harmony with nature. Our solution for existing footwear is a system for reworking over-produced models, including partnerships with local cobblers to utilize the 300 million tires disposed of in the US annually as new outsoles. We are also growing new footwear that will be residentially compostable and sold only within 500 miles of cultivation. These two supply chains are incorporated into a Plural Co-Op structure comprised of owner-members and owner-employees. These two groups cooperate as consumers and creators to guide the future of the organization. Almanac will demonstrate our considered approach to consumer-facing brands worldwide, in service of the objects, beings, and environments around us.

We are facing a crisis of human values: Unsustainable creation fueled by high-growth industry champions unconscious consumption behaviours, which in turn raise the “demand” for goods. Nowhere else are these behaviors more evident than in the global obsession with new sneakers. The growing virgin footwear industry in the US, made up of 99% imported product, is now 224 times larger than the shrinking domestic footwear repair industry. Commercial footwear directly contributes to many of the highest greenhouse-gas-emitting industries in the world. In the states, footwear has a high carbon impact due to elongated transportation and the use of toxic materials and construction methods. The current “solution” to this problem is recycling; which isn’t a long term solution, is energy-intensive while still creating waste, and has become a crutch allowing companies to continue high-volume production.

Consumers in the US are purchasing new footwear at an alarming rate of an average of 8 pairs per year. When compared to total carbon emissions of countries worldwide, foreign footwear production made for the US ranks in the top half of all 195 countries, right above Lithuania. And in order to offset these emissions, a forest larger than Lithuania would have to be planted.

As a Plural Co-Op, our owner-members and owner-employees work together to serve each other. Almanac employees allow members to share in the guidance of the brand through dialogue rather than transactions. This increased role in the brand results in consumers being more aware of creation, which guides their consumption habits. Likewise, members provide insights to employees to cultivate meaningful product solutions. As owners, each employee plays a role in managing the brand in addition to the work they put into it.

The initial Almanac cultivation and distribution network is within 500 miles of Pittsburgh, our seed city. This allows us to serve ⅓ of the US population, including 5 of the 10 largest urban areas in North America. Channeling our full output into this area allows Almanac to solve issues on a more local basis and cultivate a more tightly-knit community. As we look to tighten this radius more and more, we will put ourselves in increasingly better positions to hyper-localize our efforts.

Almanac is an economic solution to promote conscious creation and consumption within an industry rife with excess and inconsideration. Almanac consists of three clear solutions in response to current industry practices.

First, rather than organizing as a high growth entity, Almanac is organized as a Plural Co-Op comprised of owner-members and owner-employees. To balance creation and consumption, 50% of decision-making power is given to our consumers and community members while 50% is controlled by our creators or employees.

Second, Almanac proposes the cultivation and clear distinction of two product ecosystems that work together to accelerate the transitional economy away from the Anthropocene towards the Ecocene. The Regeneration loop outlines our criteria for new creation for the Ecocene. It is defined by a holistic balance with nature, resulting in zero-carbon solutions that are grown, assembled, and distributed.

The Conservation stream recognizes the need to utilize the abundance resulting from the Anthropocene. To accomplish this transitional goal we create value from the hyper-durable material waste streams in circulation through recontextualization and repair.

Together these two product economies make up the Almanac physical product strategy; a transition to the future with a pragmatic footing in the present, each guided by wisdom of the past.

Last, we recognize the importance of designing global systems and acting locally. The imperial growth practices of heavy industry has led to a global transit network responsible for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions (ITF). In consideration, Almanac limits its environmental footprint by literally limiting its environmental footprint. Almanac is committed to containing all of its physical operations within a 500 mile radius around our seed city of Pittsburgh. In practice, this translates to a truly regional object economy including sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution. Our location and current 500 mile allotment enables us to demonstrate our commitment to the environment while allowing us to serve a total of 147,946,400 people, including 1/3rd of both the US and Canadian populations. Almanac will never expand this 500 radius, we seek to shrink it. With enough demand creation, our growth strategy includes introducing a second seed city in the southwest portion of the US, serving both Mexican and United States citizens within the same region while growing Almanac as a mosaic of regional economies comprised of regional solutions.

Almanac innovates upon the contemporary brand in the following ways:

• Plural Design Philosophy: Almanac believes in the power of creativity to create beloved, functional objects in service to the health of beings and their environment. We have created a system to completely close the loop on virgin footwear production, while also extending the lives of in-use and recently discarded toxic footwear.

• Cooperative Organization: We have developed a theory of change in an industry catalyzed by the creation of what we call a Plural Co-Op. This structure is built to balance creation and consumption, represented with 50% of decision-making power and ownership available to consumer community members and 50% available to creator employees. Almanac seeks to become the first DAO (decentralized automated organization) to operate within both the digital and analog worlds.

• Regional Distribution Network: The distribution of each of our products will be limited to a 500 mile radius within which we will forbid air shipping. Through the exchange of ideas possible with modern technology, this will not limit our sphere of influence to just this radius. Almanac will design globally and produce locally.

• Consumer Relationship: The current high growth model has created a relationship with the consumer that is perpetuated on the idea of “pushing” product, creating a strained relationship predicated on emotions and pressure (marketing=selling). Almanac prefers to lead with love and logic, working with buyers to together fix the process of creation and consumption in the United States and throughout the world (marketing=education).

• Blockchain: Almanac is built as a Plural Co-Op to utilize decentralized ledgers and smart contracts, allowing the organization to automate the voting and equity distribution processes throughout the organization. This decentralized voting and governance model allows Almanac to operate in a horizontal, transparent, and efficient manner. 

• Biomimicry: Almanac utilizes this stereotypical design term in the way we believe it is truly intended. In addition to looking to nature to guide the functions of our products, our product solutions are directly cultivated from the natural world. Instead of seeking to replicate the natural world with man-made materials, our philosophy is to utilize reliable natural materials with properties that are desirable to humankind.

• Indigenous Knowledge: At Almanac we believe the future of humanity lies in our reacclimation to the natural world, unifying the man-made and natural worlds as our indigenous ancestors did. We believe that cutting edge technology can allow us to exist and blend into nature even more seamlessly than before.

Currently, Almanac is serving a group of around 300 members via social media while the Almanac Neighborhood consists of around 25 members. Through the sale of restored hyperdurable products we hope to grow the Almanac neighborhood to 500 members locally in the next year and through the transparent and collaborative nature of the brand, grow our digital following to 10,000 in that time. In five years, with 5,000 residentially compostable and locally cultivated shoes on the market and our repair business in full swing, we hope to grow our base of member-owners to at least 10,000 members with an extended digital community of 50,000 pragmatic environmentalists.

One Year:

• Officially incorporate as a Plural Cooperative.

• Produce a fully functional and residentially biodegradable prototype using a supply chain within our production region.

• Secure partnership with a used tire source.

• Pilot the used tire resoling program with a local cobbler.

• Begin production and sale of restored hyperdurable products through ecommerce.

• Stand up the business to be self-sufficient.

Five Years:

• Implement Decentralized Automated Organization platform.

• Secure long-term partnerships with all material and production sources necessary to cultivate our virgin product.

• Have 5,000 residentially biodegradable pairs of shoes in circulation.

• Begin production of second generation Almanac footwear grown from the nutrients our own biodegraded product.

• Secure partnerships with cobblers in the following key cities to implement our used tire resoling program:

  • New York City

  • Toronto

  • Chicago

  • Montreal

  • Philadelphia

One Year:

1. Connecting with the proper council to assist in starting and maintaining a Plural Cooperative.

2. Functionality and infrastructure around selected materials.

3. Costs to develop and produce larger runs of product.

4. Ability to shift cobbler business practices.

Five Years:

1. Ability to translate our Co-Op bylaws to smart-contracts.

2. Establishing a line of credit with material and production partners.

3. Feasibility of used tire supply chain standardization in key cities.

4. Ability to make product attainable to all economic groups.

One Year:

1. Connect with the Pittsburgh Chamber of Cooperatives to help us find the right council for our business.

2. Utilize the owner-member community as wear-testers for prototype feasibility and explore new material solutions if existing options do not meet our regenerative product standards.

3. Establish a sustainable growth trajectory that makes use of locally-incentivized green economy grants.

4. Clearly present the opportunity to utilize traditional cobbling methods in concert with innovative sustainable practices to revitalize local cobbling.

Five Years:

1. Work with groups such as the MIT computational law and Aragon to develop the Almanac Decentralized Automated Organization platform.

2. Bringing on our sourcing partners as owner-employees will help to establish trust and transparency between the in-house Almanac team and our external owner-partners.

3. Strategically partner with auto salvage and repair companies in areas that can support quadrants of our distribution region.

4. Create a volunteer-subsidy program, a low-income wear-testing program, and hold community footwear-rework events in low-income neighborhoods.

Plural Cooperative

The full-time Almanac employee team consists of:

• Danny Chambers: Employee-Owner, Director of Systems and Material Design 
• James Gall: Employee-Owner, Director of Brand and Product Design

Danny and James have been working on Almanac for the past 4 years. The idea for Almanac’s original concept started after we, along with another peer, Bryce Wong, voiced concerns to one another after working for a diverse group of companies within the footwear industry. Since that time, we have let the idea evolve naturally with our lifestyles and experiences. Our team is best-placed to deliver this solution because of our keen eyes for understanding the drivers that affect culture and our deep experience with developing these observations into objects and brands. Although Danny and James have arrived at very much the same philosophy in their careers, they come from diverse backgrounds. Danny grew up in the rural midwest and was raised on a foundation of public service and time outside, while James grew up in the suburbs of New York, raised by two designers and educators who taught him to value observation and collaboration. They met while attending the well regarded Product Design program at the University of Cincinnati. The DAAP Co-Op program they attended provided Danny and James a varied experience in college through a bauhaus curriculum and a series of professional contracts. After graduating, Danny went on to work as a Materials Designer for Nike, the largest footwear company in the world, while James joined FEIT, a footwear company that makes small-batch handmade footwear from natural materials. Almanac is the result of these collective experiences and intends to help cultivate many more in the future.

Our business model will generate the following revenue streams to benefit owner-members and owner-employees within our distribution region:

1. Sale of proprietary product (including regeneration loop product and small-batch conservation stream product): Almanac product will be sold through the Almanac website directly to consumers as well as through partnerships with retail stores, offering closed loop and extended life footwear alternatives to what is currently on the market. This locally-made product will stimulate US footwear production as well as be beneficial to the environment.

2. Tire resoling program: Upon partnering with local cobblers as well as auto salvage yards we will be the middleman in taking used tires and rough-cutting them into shoe outsoles for cobblers. This will provide a progressive option for customers needing shoe repair and will modernize the businesses of select cobblers, showing that they are part of the solution to our climate crisis.

3. Member donations: Almanac will also create crowd-funded production runs of regeneration loop product. Members will be able to pre-purchase footwear for a minimum of the price of a pair of shoes and will be able to pay additionally to fund supply costs, Almanac neighborhood events, and material development.

Our path to financial sustainability relies primarily on the selling of our products direct to consumers along with partnerships with retailers. We will need initial grant funding to purchase material and production on early-stage product runs until the revenue from product sales can fund ensuing production. Almanac will also continue to apply for grants in order to fund further research and innovation into new material and construction methods for future product offerings. Almanac is committed to a natural growth model that does not include financing from investors seeking accelerated growth or exits. Instead, we seek to win grants from sources that see the value in our theory of change and want to be involved in the future of the brand through owner-employeeship.

We believe that Almanac and Solve share in a familiar vision of the future. Community is central to our vision. We believe in the power of the Solve community and seek to bring our specific abilities and skills to the table knowing that a more diverse mindshare given to each problem fosters the non-linear power of collaborations. Coming from design and brand backgrounds, we have many ideas around the future of businesses that we seek to refine by talking to those with differing expertises. We believe the Solve community to be uniquely suited to these efforts due to the diversity of backgrounds within the network and the high standard of possible connections. Specific connections we hope to make include: the Sculpting Evolution and Mediated Matter groups within MIT Media Lab to aid in new product creation, the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative and Human Dynamics Lab to aid in the creation of our Decentralized Automated Organization platform, the MIT Media Lab Scalable Cooperation group to aid us in cultivating a healthy and engaged community of conscious consumers, guidance as to progressive legal advising, and access to the wealth of knowledge within the MIT Materials Research Laboratory.

Legal:

• Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services in Pittsburgh for incorporation aid

Material Development:

• Ecovative Design for their Mycoflex mycelium foam

• The Ohio State University Cornish Research Lab for their research into Dandelion Rubber

Production:

• Highland Shoe Factory in Maine

Resoling Program:

• Local Cobblers in New York City, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, and Philadelphia

Winning the GM prize on Circular Economy would greatly aid our team in achieving our one year goals while growing at a natural and sustainable pace. The majority of the prize money would be utilized to purchase materials necessary to initialize production runs of conservation stream product, which will create a consistent source of revenue, as well as to sample the first regeneration loop product. A portion of the prize will also go towards legal fees surrounding the structuring and official incorporation of our Plural Co-Op. Gaining endorsement by Solve and General Motors will also legitimize our brands in the eyes of potential partners vital to expanding the influence of Almanac (see above).