At the global corporation Adidas, he initiated the collaborations with Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, and Beyoncé. He launched the legendary Parley shoe and promised to switch the brand entirely to recycled polyester by 2024. As global brand chief from 2014 to 2019, Eric Liedtke was responsible for product design, innovation, sustainability, and brand management at Adidas. The result: during these more fortunate days, the brand achieved double-digit growth year after year.
How do you set a global corporation on a course for sustainability? Why might recycled plastic not be the best idea after all? And what can an underfunded startup do much better than a global brand?
The former top manager tells us about this as well, because two years ago he founded a startup with which he expressly aims to "create chaos." Unless Collective is the name of the company with 10 employees in Portland, Oregon. It produces sweatshirts, shirts, and shoes made purely from plant-based materials, which are therefore completely compostable at the end of their life cycle. With this approach, the 56-year-old wants to help solve the industry's gigantic waste problem. His goal: to become a disruptor for the fashion industry, much like Elon Musk and Tesla were for the automotive industry.
Reason enough to ask Eric how corporations can live up to their sustainable responsibility, why a mini-brand like "Unless" might potentially achieve more in terms of sustainability than a large corporation, and what we can learn from Native Americans. But there is also one crucial question for which Adidas' former brand chief has no answer for us. But listen for yourself!
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