We recently connected with Daniela Romeiro Dos Reis Bailey and have shared our conversation below.

Daniela, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The initial idea came from my husband Joāo , let me explain from the beginning : We’ve been in the fashion retail business in Brazil together since 1996, we had 3 brands with multiple stores , Eclectic, Checklist and Caravana Holiday.In 2013 we decided that we’d like to move to California and we were thinking what product/ products we could bring here. We were always concerned about the environment and the choice of California was because it has a strong sustainable culture.
Joāo went to a shoe’s faire in the South of Brazil and saw injections molds and a bio degradable components.
So we started doing the designs and choosing the right components.
Once the product was ready we started to commercialize in Rio and prepare our moving to USA.
We moved in 2016 to set the business, a store we had in La Jolla for 11 months and our e-commerce.
We came from Rio de Janeiro, a city with strong beach lifestyle where we use flip flops to go everywhere and as we were intending to move to California we thought that a sustainable flip flops would have a good fit.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As I told you before I started in the fashion retail long ago in 1996 with my husband, but before that I worked as an architect, so design was always my passion. The design was thought to have a good grip on the sole and the upper sole because most of the time we wear flip flops is in a wet environment. We always wanted to have a non slippery flip flops climbing the rocks of the beach we used to go next door to our house in Rio.
That’s why we have those little balls at the upper sole, and we recreate a non slippery sole based on the sailing shoes.
But the main inspiration was to make it with a recyclable component.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We started the business with our own money, as foreigners starting a business from scratch we made some mistakes like opening a retail space as we thought would be a good idea to get credibility, but as soon as we saw the money going down the drain, we closed the space and had our e-commerce ready www.greenflipflops.com . Today when I look back I see how u naïfs we were, because we had no idea how was the American market. We definitely learned from our mistakes.
But I’m grateful we did them, otherwise we wouldn’t be thriving today

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

In the middle of Covid a group called us with the intention of buying part of the business, but not paying with money but their expertise in e-commerce. We did a try out during the cold days of winter and it really didn’t work. We immediately pull out and kept it our way.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.greenflipflops.com
• Instagram: @greenflipflops.us
• Facebook: Green Flip Flops USA