Veja has never paid for ads or taken outside investors. It pays farmers and workers fairly instead, and it has still sold over 17 million pairs. Veja is a French sneaker brand started in Paris in 2004 by two friends, Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion. After working in fair trade and watching companies talk about doing good without doing it, they launched it with about €10,000. Their plan was to skip billboards, celebrity deals and ad campaigns, and spend that money on materials and the people making the shoes. Nike spent $4.7 billion on advertising and athlete sponsorships in its 2025 fiscal year. Veja buys organic cotton, grown without synthetic pesticides, directly from farmers in Brazil and Peru, and paid 3 times the market price in 2024. Two-year contracts set prices before planting, and its Amazon rubber is also bought above market price. Veja's shoes are made mainly in Brazil, in factories following the UN International Labour Organization's standards for safe, fair work. Its French warehouse is run by Log'ins, which supported over 200 workers with disabilities in 2023. The founders still own all of Veja and say outside investors could compromise its values. It doesn't even send free pairs to celebrities, and Kopp says many customers buy for the design without knowing how the shoes are made. Veja is a certified B Corp, scoring 92.7 on an independent review of its treatment of workers and the planet, where the typical business scores 50.9. Add its sourcing and factories, and it's one of the strongest sneaker brands its size. Find ethical companies to support using the Conscious Spend app. - @conscious.app