Kickstarter, Hooves and my hypocrisy

I love Kickstarter.  Not heard of it?  It's an online platform for crowdfunding creative projects.  In other words, if you have some great project but can't get (or don't want) funding from a bank, you can put it out on Kickstarter and people can pledge varying amounts of money.  It's not charity - you do get an actual product or experience for your cash.  Think of it as an up-to-date version of patronage.  In the old days, artists would have rich patrons who could support their endeavours.  Kickstarter lets us all be patrons in a small way.

Anyhow.  I've backed several projects on it.  I loved the idea of a grunge tarot pack, the Darkana, so I backed that and got to send my best friend a seriously cool kit for her collection.

I also snaffled Intuiti creative cards for another pal.  Then there was a movie and now...vegan desert boots!

See, I've had this uneasy feeling for quite a while now.  As you may know, if you're a regular reader, I'm vegetarian, verging on vegan (the odd egg or bit of goat's cheese catches me out from time to time) but, yes, I wear animals on my feet.  And yes, it's hypocrisy.  I know one can argue that the animal is dead anyhow but it's specious really.  If we didn't use animals for food, there wouldn't be dead skins hanging around for shoes and bags and wotnot.  Okay, so you could also argue that there wouldn't be a whole lot of cattle and sheep and pigs and so on, but that's another argument.  Come to think of it, does militantly vegan Liz Jones shun leather?  Kinda doubtful.  But anyhow...let's move on.

The trouble has always been, if not leather (and suede and sheepskin) then what?  My nose still quivers at the memory of vegetarian friends in the 80s with their plastic shoes.  Fine when on (if not particularly sartorially elegant) but, ye gods, once the shoes came off... let's just say I never had sex with a vegetarian in the 80s.

But that's all changed now.  Clever fabrics allow feet to breathe.  And breathing is good, huh, for all of us - people, animals and feet.  And if we're being good environmentalists (as well as being animal-friendly) we also want our footwear to be biodegradable, don't we?  Yet not too quickly...the last thing we want is for our shoes to start merging with the earth before we're done with them, huh?

Hooves...kinda cool, huh?  

All this is a long preamble to introduce you to Hooves.  Hooves are eco-friendly, animal-friendly, foot-friendly shoes.  Well, they will be - if you help.  Mark Bryceland is hoping to get £5,000 pledged so he can launch the first of hopefully many well-made,  nicely-designed shoes and boots.  There's only three days to go (if you don't hit your target within a certain time scale on Kickstarter, you lose your funding) and he's up to around £3,000.

Yes, women can look good in them too.

A pair of Hooves desert boots (in your choice of size and colour, of course) costs £60 (around $98 or 72 Euros) plus £10 postage if outside the UK.  Or you can pledge less (just to show support).  Or, of course, you can pledge lots and shoe/hoof the entire family.  If he reaches his target, your Hooves will arrive within the next couple of months.  If he doesn't, you pay nothing.  Honestly, I've done this before and it works.  No catches.

Yes, trendy men with beards and tatts wear them too! 

So, come on!  Take a punt on a pair.  But hurry!

Read about Hooves and make your pledge here...CLICK ME! 

You can also read more about Mark and why he wanted to start Hooves on this rather neat blog, My Non-Leather Life.