Keen bags line of recycled products

Nike did it with a swoosh. Converse did it with a star. Keen did it with a toe bumper.

Keen Footwear carved a niche in the $19.4 billion footwear industry when it introduced a small line of “hybrid” sandals equipped with rubber toe shields in 2003. The Bay Area-turned-Portland-based company [see “Keen Footwear plans to build green in Oregon,” SIJ, Dec. 2005], which now sells a complete line of shoes outfitted with its signature toe bumper, watched sales double in 2004 and 2005, and experienced similar growth last year. This summer, Keen is doing what every successful shoe company does: diversify.

Trying to plot a way to reuse waste from the company’s shoe manufacturing process, Keen product designers crafted Hybrid.Transport, a line of bags that incorporate aluminum and rubber materials left over from shoemaking.

“Rather than accept the idea that the excess material is pure waste, Keen started to think of ways to use the waste and to lessen the impact created by making footwear,” says Eric Groff, Keen’s national sales manager of bags and packs.

Some Keen bags also include recycled foam and polyester from outside sources. Altogether, Keen’s Hybrid.Transport line contains 40 percent recycled materials with a goal of reaching 100, according to Groff. The company also packages shoes in boxes made from biodegradable materials, natural water-based latex glue and soy-based inks.

Founded in 2003, Keen Footwear is sold in more than 1,000 retail locations nationwide. The privately held company has also established distribution networks in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Latin America and Western Europe. The Keen Foundation, established in 2004, has donated approximately $1.5 million to over a dozen conservation and humanitarian nonprofits.