zappos... now with shoe reviews

This just came through our inbox this morning... Zappos has added YouTube videos of our shoes on their site.  Check them out:

the Satire

the Snotire

happy friday,

cielo

Simple at the Sundance Film Festival!

This week Simple had the opportunity to participate in an event at the Sundance Film Festival! Gavin and I took a break from our duties at the Outdoor Retailer show to make the short drive up to Park City (which is so beautiful…I had never been!). The event took place at Park City Mountain Resort and was a benefit for SpyHop, a great organization that provides kids with hands-on and mentorship-based learning experiences in the documentary arts, film/video production, audio engineering, and interactive design.

We were stationed upstairs in the VIP lounge and were gifting a few of our newer ecoSNEAKS styles including the Satire in natural hemp, black gingham silk and chocolate multi. We also gifted the men’s carload in natural hemp, carbine in shale and tuba in black multi.

There were a bunch of great musicians performing at the event, including John Popper (Blues Traveler), Wally Ingram (Sheryl Crow), Tom Freund, Dave Pelicharo (Big Mama), Scott Kusmirek (formerly of the Gin Blossoms), New Orleans legend Chris Haugen, and accomplished L.A. singer-songwriter Matthew Moon as well as highlight performances by students from Spy Hop Productions. We had an awesome time and can't wait to go back next year!

 

 

Gavin with our table o'product

   

John Popper with his new pair of Simple Carload ecoSNEAKS

   

Scott Kusmirek and Chris Haugen with their new ecoSNEAKS

 

Our view from the VIP lounge...John Popper and Chris Haugen rocking their new Carloads on stage!

 

SpyHop student Jeremy performing with John Popper and the band

 

 

the man who planted trees, or The Story of Elzéard Bouffier, The Most Extraordinary Character I Ever Met

I was just told about this super fantastic animated short that actually started off as a beautiful short story.  I spent a small chunk of yesterday afternoon watching this between working on briefs for our Fall 2010 line (yup... we work a ways ahead of ourselves here!).  It's really a beautiful short... and an even more beautiful story.

 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a fantastic MLK day... and then a fantastic Tuesday.

hugs,
cielo

Learning is fun

Do you want to learn more Simple Shoes?

If you're reading this you've probably already visited our Web site, our blog, our Facebook page or our Twitter page. We also have a YouTube page with some sweet videos.

Bernice from Terra Tots, one of our retailers in Fayetteville, Arkansas (and Bentonville sometime soon) made her own video using Gavin, our man in the Southwest.

!Check it out!

If you want to see Gavin in person he is available for emceeing, lectures, autograph signings or as a shoe model if you're an authorized Simple Shoes retailer and are located in our Southwest sales region.

To the best of our knowledge this is his first YouTube video.

If you're not into Gavin's looks/charm/vast product knowledge you might like Bernice's voice.

Bernice is in a folk/bluegrass band called 3 Penny Acre and she will sing for you if you go to one of their live shows. They're pretty good!

Don't forget about your local store. The best way to learn about Simple shoes is by wearing them! 

que sera, sera...

Not sure if many of you check out Treehugger, but there was a great article on there about Newton Running's new packaging... or maybe a better way to put it was the packaging they tried and then rethought.

After doing a lot of research, they realized that while this box has some very cool features (recycled paper pulp, fitted to the shoe, etc), the ultimate environmental and overall effect of the design would negate the cool features.  There are limitations in terms of how many shoes can be shipped to a retailer (wasted space within the shipping boxes, needing to ship fewer shoes in more boxes, it goes on and on), so they decided to move forward to a 100% PCR box (which we do, too-- I call it our totally state--of-the-art-back-to-the-future box).

We explored a pulp box a while back (I still have the original prototype here in my office) that fell upon similar problems-- while ours wasn't so much the supplier being too far away, it was actually that the box was really, really expensive and started to disintegrate at the merest suggestion of humidity.  Not a great combo. Our footforms (the little forms inside each of our shoes that keep them from getting too squished in shipping) are made of 100% PCR pulp, though.

Check out Newton's blog here.  It's good to read about how sometimes the best (and most sustainable solution) is the simplest.

happy friday,
cielo

hmm.

For a mere 50,000, you (yes you) could purchase a t shirt from Zappos.com that would allow you to disable anyone's Zappos account. 

Or for 10 bucks, you could buy one of our fantastic t shirts with true, sage words to live by:

decisions... decisions...

hugs,
cielo