Why we are proud to offer made to order sneakers... and why it matters

DiVERGE puts you at the centre of our brand. Our mission is to give you the option to put your unique story into your sneakers... or not. We want to empower you to do it but we don't make any judgment if you don't. Because we know that sometimes you want to share your story with the world and sometimes you want to protect it from the world. The most important for us is that you get to decide. You decide, we make them. Regardless if you customise or not your sneakers, we will make them just for you, one pair at a time.

We are proud that all the sneakers we offer are made to order. We believe that making products to stock is one of the biggest issues in the fashion industry today. Destruction of excess products is a common practice in the fashion industry. Brands destroy products as a way to maintain exclusivity through scarcity and preserve their reputation. For example, in its 2017-18 annual report, Burberry revealed that "the cost of finished goods physically destroyed in the year was £28.6m", though it has since announced that it would put an end to this practice. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, every year Italian fashion label Stefano Ricci "box up the year's unsold products and send them off on trucks to be burned". A story published in the New York Times in 2017 reported that Nike slashed and dispensed shoes so that they could not be worn or resold.

According to Timo Rissanen, a professor of fashion design and sustainability at Parsons School of Design in New York, brands destroy perfectly good merchandise because "there's more stuff than there ever has been before" since fashion cycles have become shorter. As Professor Rissanen says "it gets insane thinking about clothes that were never worn in the first place. The fabric was made, the garments were made, the labour was put in, and then the stuff gets burned. It represents all kinds of different waste across the system."

So be as proud as we are that your DiVERGE sneakers were made to order. No waste, no problem!

DiVERGE. Make your own way.

Sources: Burberry Annual Report 2017/18, WSJ - Why Luxury Brands Burn Their Own Goods, TNYT - Slashers' Work Ruins Shoes Discarded at a Nike Store, Vox - Why fashion brands destroy billion's worth of their own merchandise every year