Sustainable brand Allbirds expands into activewear

Allbirds Sustainable fashion brand Allbirds has become the latest company to enter the fast-growing activewear market. The San Francisco-based company said Tuesday it has launched its first performance apparel collection, called Allbirds Natural Run Apparel, after two years and more than 70 iterations. The collection is made using Eucalyptus Tree fibre and Merino Wool, and comprises leggings, bike shorts, running shorts, tank tops and t-shirts. Prices range from 48 pounds for a top to 98 pounds for leggings. As well as being made from sustainable materials, Allbirds said it’s the first performance apparel line to be labelled entirely with its carbon footprint, which ranges from 4.7 kg to 14.5 kg CO2e - before being 100 percent offset to zero. It comes after Allbirds released an open-source tool for fashion brands to calculate their carbon footprint back in April. The company, which began its days as an e-tailer selling exclusively footwear but has since expanded into apparel, creates its collections using a number of regenerative natural materials such as SweetFoam, a proprietary innovation made with sugarcane. In February, Allbirds revealed it had invested 2 million dollars in material innovation firm Natural Fiber Welding and its Mirum technology to create a new 100 percent natural plant-based leather. The company, which last September was valued at around 1.7 billion dollars, reportedly filed for a confidential IPO in June, according to a report by WWD. Allbirds is the latest brand to step into the red-hot activewear market which has been fuelled in the past year by new work-from-home and healthy lifestyle habits adopted during the pandemic. Earlier this month, Levi Strauss announced plans to buy US-based premium athletic and lifestyle apparel brand Beyond Yoga for an undisclosed sum as it looks to enter the activewear segment. The denim giant said the transaction is expected to contribute more than 100 million dollars to its FF22 net revenue, and to be “immediately accretive” to gross margins, EBIT margins and EPS.
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