Hello friends,
Welcome to The Good Guys Note #15 about our "Renewal".
How it started?
Marion, who was a freelance shoe-designer in Paris, initially started Good Guys because she couldn’t find cruelty-free shoes she liked and felt others would follow her need for more conscious fashion and ethics.
In 2011, Good Guys was launched. Since then, Marion has designed and produced a wide range of Vegan shoes she wanted to wear on various occasions, from boots to clogs and sneakers. Good Guys was sold worldwide, from Japan to Europe to the United States, where she now resides and keeps creating her collections.
Today,
Marion works from her studio in San Pedro, California. Good Guys is still a fairly small company with a mighty cause and faithful following. For more than ten years, Marion never stopped working toward spreading her love for animals and our planet through her creations and searching the best alternative to leather and suede to work from.
Why a Renewal?
The past few years have been tough for everybody; Covid put our world upside down and changed the way we interact with each other, the time we spend outdoors or indoors, the need for isolation as well as the longing for real connection and the feeling of overstimulation coming from our computers, social media, and phones.
In the summer of 2021, Marion, founder of Good Guys, broke her foot, which led her to embark on a journey of chronic pain, resilience, and frustration. The joke was on her, a shoe designer who couldn’t walk more than 15 minutes at a time as she developed a rare condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, aka CRPS. Her world was forever changed, and designing shoes was almost as painful as being unable to wear anything except recovery shoes.
That is When and Why the Renewal was set in motion.
Our Logo,
We've come a long way from our "vintage" logo with many fonts (lol) to the cursive wobbly logo with a smiley. This change is also a change of "motto." We invite you to "go Vegan" with us and not ban people who wear leather from our circle.
The Logo itself was created by the founder, Marion, aka Mayon, a visual artist who wanted to take back her brand's aesthetic and logo to make it as personal as possible.
We invite you and want to put a positive spin on our message and mission of changing the approach toward cruelty-free fashion.
Why Rebrand?
As we mentioned above, We wanted to evoke a positive message that is non-exclusive, non-judgmental, and more invitational. Many of our customers, and maybe you, who are reading this blog entry, might not be Vegan, but you are here because you love our shoes or are curious about our mission and what we do within our collections.
That is why we needed to slightly change the name and emphasize the positive aspect that words can carry. "Good Guys" for the positivity and "Go Vegan" for a more invitational message.
We started this “renewal” journey by introducing our new running shoes, the BABER-GV, As mentioned earlier, Marion needed comfy shoes for her now sensitive feet, so she started by creating ideal stylish sneakers.
We will bring back your favorite boots and shoes in up-to-date versions, emphasizing the details and effort of using the best sustainable components, like Appelskin material, recycled rubber, bio-based lining and organic conton.
We will showcase surprising projects linked to Marion’s other field of interest that she noticed she has in common with Good Guys community; it will be projects related to artisanal and savoir-faire...
Stay tuned ! Thanks for reading this Good Guys Note !
