Hush Puppies GM Charlene Perera discusses the brand's corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy and how it is pursuing these goals.
CSR is so important for the world and I just think from a brand side of things, we're a brand that promotes optimism and that is the backbone of everything that we do.
Being a bigger business means you're in this incredible position to be an economic liberator, you can be a community maker.
We really have focused on that balance between people, purpose, profit and the planet and that if we know we can do something that is better for the planet and that is also better for our profit line, that is incredibly sustainable.
Moving forward, it is our responsibility to be doing better things and utilising our platforms to make a positive impact.
So we've been doing lots of things with our factories for many years and growing year on year to get transparency throughout the supply chain.
But we really wanted to pull something together to really drive the team - and when I say the team I mean right through the value chain - and set some really clear goals over the next five years of what we were going to achieve.
We've got aims like by 2022 we will have at least one element that is recycled or eco friendly in every shoe and we're making some bigger claims around where we want out leathers to be sourced from.
By 2026 we want to be B-Corp certified, we really want to be a change maker in that space.
So we finalised our responsibility strategy a couple of months ago and that's just gone live at a consumer level as well.
We released our campaign and our first set of shoes that were made from recycled water bottles.
But the CSR strategy means more to us than just shoes.
While the shoes have been at the forefront of it all, at a brand level it was about reaching these goals that we set for ourselves over the next five years.
With our strategy, the line that we're using is that, 'we may not be perfect but we are determined in our pursuit to better ourselves with time and persistence,' and that is the key to everything because we're definitely not perfect no but heaven knows we're trying to be.
It's about showing that this is an authentic way forward.
Our strategy has been built around three pillars; worker wellbeing, environmental impact and responsible sourcing.
Then on top of that, we have our charity partners that we're working with and making sure that all of that well and truly aligns back to the brand.
One of the partners that we're working with is called Save Our Soles and we are doing a recyclable shoe program where people can recycle their shoes in our stores and they get turned into rubber mats that are used in playgrounds and gyms.
We also have the Happy Box Project which is about supplying essential needs for women in remote parts of Australia.
That's about utilising our shoeboxes to fill them with those needs and send to those women.
We also have an ongoing alignment with the RSPCA which we've had for quite a few years now which is pretty important to all of us.
So we're trying to kind of touch CSR from a lot of angles versus just shoes that were made sustainably because I think that's just 1% of a much bigger piece of work.