Allbirds reportedly files confidentially for IPO

Sustainable footwear and apparel brand Allbirds may be the latest company to become listed on the red-hot IPO market.

The San Francisco-based company, which this past year was rumoured to be in talks with banks over a potential flotation, has reportedly filed for a confidential IPO, WWD reports, citing top financial and industry sources.

The company, which began its days as an e-tailer selling exclusively footwear but has since expanded into apparel, was last September valued at around 1.7 billion dollars.

If it goes ahead, it'll be the most recent in a spate of fashion IPOs occurring because the outbreak of the pandemic, regardless of the industry as a whole being hit hard through the crisis.

Those companies include resale platforms Poshmark and ThredUp, eyewear brand Warby Parker, iconic boot maker Dr Martens and British e-commerce giant The Hut Group.

Allbirds was launched in 2016 by former soccer player Tim Brown and professional engineer Joey Zwillinger and has now made a name for itself on the sustainable fashion scene because of its make use of regenerative natural materials including FSC-certified eucalyptus tree fibre and SweetFoam, a proprietary innovation made out of sugarcane.

In February, the business revealed it had invested 2 million dollars in material innovation firm Natural Fiber Welding and its Mirum technology to make a new completely natural plant-based leather.

In May, Allbirds teamed up with Adidas to unveil the first product from their Futurecraft.Footprint collaboration. It had been a prototype running shoe with a carbon footprint of 2.94 kilograms CO2e (skin tightening and equivalent emissions) per pair. In comparisons, among Adidas’ Adizero RC3 running shoes includes a carbon footprint of 7.86 kilograms CO2e.

Today, Allbirds serves 35 countries with 23 brick-and-mortar stores across the world.