Vivobarefoot - 2024 integrated annual report review
The Vivobarefoot report is one I keep referring back to so I was looking forward to reading this year’s. It’s still very long (took me three sittings to get through it!) but full of brilliant insights.
👍🏻 Three things I like:
1. NATURE IS PRESENT THROUGHOUT
Nature is woven throughout the report – in what they say, the imagery chosen, how they work as a business and the way nature informs product development.
What I find most powerful is their “firm belief that nature always has the right answers” and how this sees them taking important meetings and decisions outside.
2. LEVEL OF TRANSPARENCY
This report really leads the way in terms of transparency. Four specific examples:
🔎 I still love their page of “fantastic failures” that is given as much prominence as their “champagne moments”.
🔎 They go into detail about how each product needs to be improved (e.g. to reduce environmental impact or improve performance) and share the specific challenges they’re grappling with.
🔎 They recognise some “systemic sexism” within their business – e.g. that they don’t test their shoes with as many women as men.
🔎 With their staff survey results, they are as open about where they need to improve as where they did well.
3. FEEDBACK LOOP BETWEEN REPAIR & DESIGN TEAMS
Repairability, durability, cleanability, recyclability – all these things are determined at the design stage. And yet the measure of them isn’t seen until much later.
To reduce environmental impact of products, we need to be learning how to improve against all these measures. So I love that there is a feedback loop between Vivo’s repair and design teams – so that shoe designs can be constantly evolved to help extend the life of each product and so reduce its environmental impact.
❓Three questions it raises:
1. WHY ARE THEY BANKING WITH HSBC?
HSBC is regularly called out as one of the banks that invests most in fossil fuels (https://bank.green/banks/hsbc). Moving money away from fossil fuel funders is often one of the most impactful things a business or individual can do.
That said, moving banks is not always easy especially for larger businesses. So I’m curious to know why Vivobarefoot are still banking with HSBC and which barriers are making it difficult for them to move away to a less harmful bank?
2. HAVE THEY EXPLORED PUTTING NATURE ON THE BOARD?
Nature is clearly central to Vivobarefoot and inspires their ways of working and their products. So I was curious to know if they’ve thought about putting nature on the Board in the way that Faith in Nature and House of Hackney have done?
3. HOW DID THEY FIND A MISSION & VALUES ALIGNED INVESTOR?
They took on new investment during the year. This can be a risky change for an impact-led business and there are plenty of examples of the impact focus being diluted following a change at the investor level.
What approach did they take to find an investor that was vision and mission aligned? What due diligence did they do to make sure that their mission and culture wouldn’t be negatively affected?
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You can read the report for yourself here and let me know what you think.
If you’re preparing to write your own impact report, you might find my FREE Impact Reporting Roadmap helpful: