MERIDIAN, Miss. (Queen City Newsfeed) – A Meridian business is stepping up their game and providing the local economy with new opportunities.
The EMBDC hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony for Shloop Friday morning.
The sustainable footwear factory is located on 22nd Avenue and produces sneakers, sandals, slippers, boots, and even shoes made of leather— with new product lines being created each month.
“We’ve been operating, making shoes, training our team, building designs, building collections for the past 18 months, and today, finally, we have opened the doors to the public to allow everybody to come in and see what we’ve been up to,” said Ryan Hunt, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Shloop.
The factory and outlet store currently employ around 35 people with additional contract employees.
Hunt said the idea came about after supply issues with footwear during the pandemic.
“98% of the shoes that are coming into this country are imported mostly from Asia. So we are actually making shoes with American made materials, American workmanship, American craftsmanship, and we’re doing it right here in Mississippi,” said Hunt. “The problem is during the pandemic, all those shoes are made in Asia. When the pandemic shut down the supply chain and inflation rose, we had a really big problem shipping all of our materials to Asia and being cost competitive both in time and in money. So, with Schloop, we’re really changing the paradigm. We are trying to build a new manufacturing regime where we an actually reshore manufacturing, do the design, do the development, the production, we can do it in the states. We can help brands reshore. We can help brands near shore through our network of different factories in this region.”
Mike Van Drunen, the CEO of Shloop, said the company is currently in talks to make shoes for government employees.
“If there’s a footwear factory in the United States that can supply shoes to the government, the government really requires, whether you’re federal, state, or local, you have to buy shoes from an entity that’s in the United States. So, until we showed up, there wasn’t many options for the government,” said Van Drunen. “So the government has reached out to us saying ‘hey, would you be able to make shoes for us?’ We’re in that approval process right now, but we’re expecting Q1 of 2025 to actually have shoes leaving Meridian that’s going to be going to federal agencies around the country.”
“Just yesterday alone, working with the government, we quoted $8 million worth of shoes yesterday. Now, those aren’t contracts that have been awarded to us, but we’ve quoted them. So, we expect that just to continue. The U.S. Government buys over $1 billion worth a year of shoes,” said Van Drunen.
Shloop creates the soles of their shoes using a familiar plant, algae — Crafting innovation in every step.
“When we first moved to Meridian, we came here because we were building a factory to use a sustainable material called algae. Algae is one of the simplest plants on the planet, and it’s the fastest growing in order of magnitude. So, we have been on a mission to leverage the capability and sustainability of algae in consumer products, and that culminated in a product called Bloom, which is a factory also located here in Meridian, and that Bloom material is shipped to footwear brands. Footwear brands use it as a sustainable ingredient in their sneakers and the shoes, “said Hunt.
Representatives of Shloop hope this new venture will have a positive impact on the local economy.
“I would say that our mission at Shloop is to accelerate the reshoring and sustainable manufacturing practices for footwear and we’re helping brands with producing products more sustainably here at home that helps drive our community growth and keeps the wealth here,” said Hunt.
