Adelante Shoe Co.
Organization Details
Adelante Shoe Co. is a for-profit social enterprise that works with master cobblers in Guatemala to handmake modern classic, leather shoes. We sell our shoes direct-to-customer in the US and pay our craftsmen enough to live well with their families in exchange for work well done.
The Adelante mission is to make it absolutely effortless for customers to buy a socially responsible pair of shoes without compromising on quality, style, or price. On the production side, our mission requires us to make the highest quality shoes possible and provide them to customers at the best possible price, while also paying our craftsmen a living well wage.
Support Needs
We’re looking for:
Brand DesignDesign (Product or Industrial)Industrial Design
Impact Story
Our social impact model, called the Living Well Line, is core to our operations and value proposition. Put simply, the Living Well Line is the cost of living well in a given community, in our case that community is Pastores, Guatemala. Adelante pays its craftsmen enough to live well with their families, which means that having determined the Living Well Line in Pastores was an integral part of ensuring we achieve our social impact mission. In order to determine the Living Well Line in Pastores, we first did an econometric regression analysis of World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study data at the country-wide level. This regression correlates Guatemalans who self-identify as living well with the consumption of certain goods and services. Then, we moved into in-person interviews, asking craftsmen what they needed to live well, as they defined it.
This approach enables us to rigorously cross check our quantitatively determined consumption indicators with qualitative data. We remove outliers from both the quantitative and qualitative sides of the analysis, and are left with a list of goods and services that the craftsmen define as necessary to live well. Then, we price the goods and services, and are left with the resulting cost of living well, or Living Well Line in Pastores, Guatemala.
