When your entire identity is wrapped up in being a pair, being single can be tough. That’s why in 2010, Jerome Perreault, a former Inventory Team Leader at our Vancouver store, formalized an online singles party, billed as “your shoe’s last best hope at finding its ‘sole’-mate.” Basically the Plenty of Fish of the shoe world.
A supportive, nature-loving single looking the perfect match.
Likes to keep things breezy and low profile.
Values stability, flexibility and efficiency.
“We recognized that a lot of our shoe inventory grief was a result of singles – a re-boxing error, a mismatched pair, a missing display shoe,” explains Harry Henderson, Project Manager Operations. “Stores didn’t have a way to deal with these solo items.”
In an attempt to turn some of that inventory woe into product that could once again be sold, a webpage dedicated to reuniting — “perhaps passionately?” as the webpage reads — single shoes was launched. Stores used the intranet page to swap their mismatched shoes, with the hopes of finding opposite-footed matches in another store. While the idea proved novel, we discovered that all the hoping in the world didn’t increase the success rate of the right model in the right size popping up somewhere in the country. “In general the number of matches has been fairly low in relation to the number of single items posted on the singles party site,” reports Harry.
And maybe, if we weren’t a cooperative outdoor retailer that sees value in both sales and sustainability, this would have been where it ended. But the single shoe dilemma has long been on David Robinson’s radar. As Regional Sustainability and Community Coordinator, David was aware, more from an environmental angle than an inventory one, that something needed to be done with the singles.
“Back in 2007, our initial source for donating single shoes — a hospital in Hamilton that worked with patients who had amputations — got to a point where they had enough single shoes,” explains David. “Sean McSweeney, manager of MEC Toronto, told me about the National Odd Shoe Exchange (NOSE), a non-profit in Arizona that collects single shoes for people who require different sizes, usually due to injury, disease or genetic disorders.”
David contacted them, and ever since, whatever shoes don’t find matches through the stores’ “singles party” program, we donate. “It’s rewarding to know that our single shoes are able to help people in need,” says David, “while at the same time, donating to NOSE helps us to reduce our own waste.”
And, with stores donating an estimated 300-400 single shoes per year, our connection to NOSE warms our heart as much as the thought of reunited sole-mates.
Find more facts and figures on waste diversion and sustainability efforts.
Single shoe inventory in our Calgary store, getting ready to be reunited or donated. Photo by Product Team Leader Jasmine Noella Burton.