By Mario Toneguzzi

A Vancouver-based footwear retailer has turned the concept of ‘doing good’ into a smart business practice as the company has three times its sales since embarking on the community goodwill initiative.

Vessi, a direct to consumer sneaker company, recently turned to its online community to ask how it could give back and then launched a series of initiatives for COVID-19 (coronavirus) relief.

Tony Yu, co-founder of the company who focuses on the marketing and business development and strategy side of the business, said giving back to the community is the right thing to do.

“The community is like what brought us up. If we can give back to our community, we’re effectively making our home even a better place,” said Yu. “It’s one of the core things from our founders’ perspective but we also feel kind of obligated to help be that voice of our customers. How can we give back?”

View this post on Instagram

Apply via our #linkinbio!⁠⠀ ⁠You know your community best. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Over the past few weeks we’ve been blown away by the initiatives of our community in the fight against COVID-19. From creating a volunteer network of grocery deliveries, 3d printing PPE, to buying meals for our frontline healthcare workers, we realized that you know your community best. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ This is why we’ve set up the Vessi Community Fund – a fund to support our everyday heroes who are looking to make a difference through small acts of kindness within their community.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ To kick start things off, we’re giving away $1,000/day to support 10 community projects daily. Everyone is welcome to apply, no project is too small – we’ve got your back.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Apply today and tag a friend – let’s create moments of happiness and #makewaves⁠ 🌊

A post shared by Vessi (@vessifootwear) on Apr 20, 2020 at 3:59pm PDT

View this post on Instagram

Our Choose What You Pay, mask initiative and sale is ending at Midnight (PST) tomorrow night! ⁠ ⁠ Even though this initiative is coming to a close, we're not stopping now. It's only made us more inspired and motivated to continue to support the community during this time, so be on the lookout for more from us soon!⁠ ⁠ If you haven't already, for the next 24 hours or so, be sure to snag a pair of Vessis at a truly all-time-low price, all while supporting your Healthcare community by fundraising masks. 💙⁠ ⁠ Vessis for $80 - 40% off - no donation⁠ Code: THANKYOU⁠ ⁠ Vessis for $95 - 30% off - 80 mask donation⁠ Code: SUPERHEROES⁠ ⁠ Vessis for $135 - regular price - 110 mask donation⁠ Code: [No code required! Because you're amazing.]⁠ ⁠ We can't say this enough, but we have so much gratitude for you all - especially those fighting this pandemic first-hand every day. You've all proven that when people unite against a common cause, they can move mountains. ⁠ ⁠ Vessi⁠ ⁠

A post shared by Vessi (@vessifootwear) on Apr 13, 2020 at 6:06pm PDT

“We shifted a lot of our existing marketing budget over to community relief efforts.”

The online retailer has given away 2,000 free sneakers to health-care workers, launched a ‘pay what you can’ model to donate 400,000 face masks, and created a Community Fund Program to give away $100,000 for initiatives launched in the community. It also started Vessi TV giving the community ways to stay healthy and cope with the coronavirus crisis.

Yu said the fund supports small community projects - everything from volunteers delivering groceries and medicine, to people making face masks and personal protective equipment.

“However we can use this fund to enable small pockets of happiness now that’s really the mandate,” he said.

Vessi was founded in 2017 but it launched publicly in September 2018.

View this post on Instagram

These past few weeks have been so enlightening while we've connected with our healthcare communities. We've learned so much about all the moving parts and the importance of the essential-services fighting COVID-19. Thank you for sharing your stories with us and binding our communities together!⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Our mission to help during this pandemic is far from finished. We are bursting with ideas to keep us all connected, supported and uplifted during this hard time. ⁠Stay tuned and follow along for all of our next steps.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ For the time being, our Choose What you Pay sale in support of fundraising PPE for Canadian and US healthcare workers is still on for a limited time! ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ To the healthcare workers, thank you for including us on your journey! We're all in this together.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Have any questions or suggestions on how we can stay involved? Leave us a comment below to connect!⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Vessi⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ 📸⁠⠀ 1. @ohlacherie⁠⠀ 2. @awesomemom2000tv⁠⠀ 3. @hwebber01⁠⠀ 4. @brooke.vdb⁠⠀ 5. Sarah and the Maple Ridge Urgent & Primary Care Team⁠⠀

A post shared by Vessi (@vessifootwear) on Apr 3, 2020 at 4:20pm PDT

View this post on Instagram

4000 hard-working feet that are hopefully feeling a little bit more support this week. #healthcareheroes ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Thank you for your support throughout this campaign! Stay tuned next week for our next chapter of our COVID-19 community journey. #stayconnected #strengthinnumbers⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Vessi⁠⠀

A post shared by Vessi (@vessifootwear) on Apr 8, 2020 at 3:42pm PDT

“We created a knit material and the first 100 percent fully waterproof knit shoe. Combined all the benefits of a knit product with the additional feature where you can wear it with snow and rain all the way through spring and summer time. Our unique material insulates during the winter and also cools your feet in the summer but retains the waterproof tech,” said Yu.

The company has a facility in Taiwan that manufactures the footwear and it owns global patents on all of its technology as well.

The retailer has been focused on delivering a really good experience to its customers while being able to grow the company.

“We have done pop up stores in the past. A handful of them and they’ve all done quite well,” said Yu.

In the future, Yu foresees the footwear retailer having a retail presence.

“We’ve got a lot of inbound requests from big box retail stores but we’ve been very cautious about how to move into them. At the same time, this year we had plans to open up retail stores both USA and Canada in our core demographic areas, but coronavirus stuff happened and that kind of got pulled back,” he said.

The company expects to hit one million customers by the end of 2020.

COVID-19 definitely put a damper on the retailer’s expansion plans.

“We’ve had a really good experience with retail stores when we set up our pop up stores. So that was a pretty big disappointment. We were in the process of actually designing a proper retail front. We have our locations really set up like an experience centre. You can walk into the store, slip on a pair of shoes from our shoe bar and then walk through water inside the stores. We’ve built out this whole feature set,” said Yu.

But when that was put on hold the company began thinking creatively on how it could help the community and give back to the community.

Mario Toneguzzi, based in Calgary has 37 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald covering sports, crime, politics, health, city and breaking news, and business. For 12 years as a business writer, his main beats were commercial and residential real estate, retail, small business and general economic news. He nows works on his own as a freelance writer and consultant in communications and media relations/training. Email: mdtoneguzzi@gmail.com

TODAY’S TOP HEADLINES