Leather manufacturer celebrates Aku award
23/01/2020
The shoe, which, as the name suggests, Aku says it has designed with reducing waste in mind, has won a gold award in the urban lifestyle footwear segment in the outdoor category at the 2020 Ispo Awards.
On announcing the Minima as the winner of the prize, the organisers of the ISPO sport and outdoor exhibition in Munich placed heavy emphasis on the shoe’s use of leather.
They highlighted the use of a single-piece leather upper, with the leather coming from Aku’s near neighbour in the Veneto region and long-term partner Dani. As for previous models, the footwear company chose leather from Dani’s Zero Impact range, which means metal-free leather whose carbon footprint Dani has offset through investment in reforestation programmes.
Aku’s design deliberately includes a separate small piece of leather at the heel, which allows it to cut and use any area of a hide with a surface blemish. The process simply involves turning these pieces around to show the unblemished flesh side.
ISPO said this level of care and attention over the leather it is using makes the Minima a worthy winner.
For its part, Dani commented that this was “a great result” for Aku and said it proud to have contributed to it through supplying its Zero Impact leather.
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