Media start-up wants to produce sneakers

Flip enters into a cooperation with shoe manufacturer Monaco Ducks to distribute a recycled sneaker. This was triggered by research by the medium.

The media start-up Flip wants to launch a recycled sneaker on the market. The company is now launching a crowdfunding round together with shoe manufacturer Monaco Ducks.

Flip became known a few months ago thanks to the research project "Sneakerjagd", in which the journalistic founders tracked the journey of a sneaker from Germany to Africa. According to the research, the barely usable sneakers primarily pollute the environment there. According to Flip co-founder Christian Salewski, this is a problem that large manufacturers do not take care of: "We therefore decided to take a radically constructive approach to finding a solution."

For the sneaker called Marabu, Flip and Monaco Ducks want to shred the waste sneakers from Kenya into granulate and process them into a new shoe. The local partner is the Kenyan start-up Africa Collect Textiles. "We are not the world's landfill," says Alex Musembi, co-founder of the company. "A recycled sneaker that helps tackle the problem locally is overdue and can become part of the solution."

Flip and Monaco Ducks have founded their own company called GNRD for the Kickstarter campaign. Anyone who wants to can virtually pre-order a pair of shoes there and have them delivered once the funding target has been reached.