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GSS Blog

Aug 23

GreenSoul Shoes

So earlier this week, we donated the first batch of shoes to school children from the Philippines Christian Foundation in Navotas City, Philippines. The children were really excited and the school had them perform a thank you dance for us. Overwhelmingly, the people are excited to have us join them in their community and we are excited to work with them.

The location was set in a community of 500 to 1000  folks who lived in a local cemetery which was kind of macabre as there were open graves which were waiting to be reused.

There was also a section of housing built on stilts that extended into the water–the living conditions were still extremely rough and many sections of the bamboo floors were coming apart–making it important to look where you placed your foot.

By the time we left, we had over a hundred smiling faces and a community that had something new to celebrate. It has been a great week for our team over at GreenSoul Shoes and we are pretty excited about next steps!

More pictures here: http://su.pr/1DdOWq

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Jul 31

Our fearless leader, Alastair was interviewed by Liz and Joan Hamburg for their WOR 710AM radio show, “LaunchPad.” We were pleasantly surprised by especially Liz Hamburg, who was the motivating factor in getting GSS featured for this radio show. She really did her homework and asked all of the perfect question, making Alastair’s job so easy – he looks so purrrrtey. Click here to listen to the interview with Alastair: http://su.pr/2OPgxr

2006joan-lizLaunchpad is heard live every Monday morning at 12:40 pm.

“Serial entrepreneur” Liz Hamburg and her mother Joan Hamburg bring you inspiring stories from small business owners and entrepreneurs. Hear directly Everything from those who are just starting out to the many who have already made it. All of them have war stories to share and tips of what to do and not to do. Launchpad also offers expert advice on how to finance your business, how to market it, how to deal with employees, health insurance and lots of other important topics.

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Jul 23

GreenSoul Shoes was invited to give a lecture on Social Entrepreneurship to high school kids from the Prep to Prep program in New York City.  These bright and outgoing kids have been picked after a rigorous selection process for a 14-month long after school program.  The program covers from advance academics to personal development.  During this summer, they are focusing on creating their own business plan.  Their business ideas range from a service to convert analog media to digital media for the non-techies to selling vintage dresses.  We could see how driven they were!  we have no doubt that they will be our future leaders and successful businessmen/women.

preptoprep

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Jul 14

We really care about wasteful packaging. Check out this posting by treehugger on one of the worst packaging ideas ever:

bad-packaging-design-individually-wrapped-bananas-photo

Since we view our friends and supporters as important partners  in our new venture, we need your help in deciding which packaging we should use. Click here: http://su.pr/2MRBUk

Check back in a week when we post the results!

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Jul 05

So about half a month ago, we announced a contest to find the packaging design for our shoebox. Today, we are happy to announce our winner: Meg Sullivan. She was a class of 2008 graphic design student at Yale, where she was also on the crew team for four years. Today, she works as a graphic designer in Norwalk, CT.
contest1

She tells us she loves design, photography, rowing, adventures, and all things funny, odd, colorful, or serene.

Check out her other designs here.

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Jun 30
Hi, my name is Yvonne Wang, and I the current Miss Earth New York. In July, I will be representing New York in the Miss Earth United States pageant in Las Vegas. This pageant system advocates environmental awareness and advocacy, and the winner will go onto the international Miss Earth competition in the Philippines.

So we are excited to announce that Yvonne Wang will be representing us as Miss Earth New York at the United States pageant in Las Vegas. The pageant advocates environmental awareness and advocacy through the power of broadcasting and media campaigns. Miss Earth is the third largest beauty pageant in the world, behind Miss Universe and Miss World, in terms of the number of national-level competitions.  Its major project “I Love Planet Earth School Tour,” teaches and distributes educational aides for school children.

Thanks Yvonne!

ivonne

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Jun 15

npr

So its been two weeks since our NPR piece (http://tinyurl.com/p6kpeu) and I just wanted to say that things are good! Here’s a clip from the article which focused on the green (but not the give). I guess we do have quite a few different elements to our business to talk about!

“Stephen Chen pushes some boxes around his tiny Manhattan office looking for a place to sit. Then he perches on the edge of a desk and takes out a pair of dark rubber sandals. They’re “100 percent recycled post-consumer use” sandals made out of tires, Chen says.

Chen, 26, is a partner at a company called GreenSoul Shoes. He’s scrupulously polite, though he stops to look at his BlackBerry every chance he gets. Chen grew up in the Bronx — a math wiz who went to Brown. He later landed a job at Bear Stearns. He loved the intense competition of the place, and he would have stayed, but then one weekend last year, Bear Stearns collapsed.”

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May 28

brooklynsummit

During the Brooklyn Summit Expo, GreenSoul Shoes was announced as the winner of the Triple Bottom Line Business Competition. From 20+ business plans, 10 were selected as semifinalist and 3 as finalist. GreenSoul Shoes shares the honors with Green For Brooklyn and Brooklyn Victory Garden as finalist.

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May 18

Congratulations to William Cherwin!

The judges announced William Cherwin as the winner of the 1st GreenSoul Shoes Design Contest.

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About William: Born in Rochester, New York and currently living in Tennessee when not at school, William is a rising sophomore majoring in fashion design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

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The GreenSoul Shoes team wants to extent a big THANK YOU all participants for a wonderful contest! Please stay tuned to our 2nd contest in the Fall!

The 1st GreenSoul Shoes Design Contest ‘Design Your Soul’ is now officially closed.


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May 08

So our team has been visiting different fulfillment centers in the metro NYC area. Thus far we have looked at a number of centers (in fact, just one yesterday!) and have been rating each location on a number of metrics including:

  1. Do they resonate with our mission?
  2. How responsive is their customer service?
  3. Who are some of their other clients?
  4. How orderly are their facilities?

Collectively, these elements will help us determine if there is an opportunity to create a really special, long term partnership. Here is a picture we took of Iris yesterday at one of our site visits. =)

IMG_0129

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