High Tech and Cruelty Free Vegan Shopping

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2004

Sue Blankman's eyes lit up as she scanned the rack of belts and shoes at Otsu, a nook in San Francisco's Mission District that's one of the nation's few vegan boutiques. Scoring a hot belt made of recycled tires is a tiny miracle of the holiday shopping season for vegans -- folks who don't eat or use animal products.

For many vegans, these weeks of gluttonous end-of-the-year consumerism bring an odd mix of emotions. Where some struggle with the cultural loneliness of meat-centered holiday dinners, others see the ham-and-slaughtered-goose season as a chance to gently evangelize their lifestyle. "You can tell people the facts," Blankman says, about how their meal arrived on the plate.

Yet away from the table, many vegans are seeking the same Holy Grail as other holiday shoppers -- say, a decent pair of shoes -- that wasn't once a cow or an alligator.

Although Blankman liked Otsu's selection, she didn't score any shoes.

"But at least I found a cool-looking belt for my friend in Colorado," said Blankman, a 36-year-old who works for a nonprofit agency and on this day was shod with manmade Mary Janes. "Hopefully, it will show people that this stuff can be decent-looking."

A vegan retail oasis like Otsu is rare, even in Northern California, a hub of the animal rights and organic food movements. While soy milk and veggie burgers have become common at Safeway, and families may indulge their meat- averse members with a tofurkey at Thanksgiving, vegan consumer items are still hovering at the fringes of mainstream culture, largely confined to specialty Web sites and boutique corners.

That can be a retail challenge for Bay Area holiday shoppers, who are more likely than most Americans to have a vegan on their to-buy-for list. Vegans don't look kindly on cashmere sweaters, silk ties or leather jackets. Forget buying that goose down comforter, too, or tucking a jar of honey (remember the bees!) in that food gift basket.

Vegans-in-the-know also caution against buying shoes billed merely as "nonleather." The glue used to bind the sole to the nonleather can be made of you-don't-want-to-know-what parts of a cow.

Cosmetics and soaps? Vegans prefer theirs researched and manufactured under "cruelty-free" conditions.

Vegan-friendly designers and retailers say part of the reason for the relative dearth of products is that many manufacturers have an outdated image of your typical vegan consumer. Or, at least, of what they want.

"Everybody still thinks it's all about hippie clothing and hemp," said Jackie Horrick of Pasadena, who started the online Alternative Outfitters in April and has seen her business double every month since.

The big sellers among her 300 items: a vegan takeoff on the trendy Ugg boots and a Gore-Tex cell phone pouch. "You'd be surprised how hard it is to find (vegan) cell phone pouches," she said. (It's the leather.)

While vegan Web sites link to Horrick's business, she pointedly decided not to use "vegan" in her store name. "I didn't want to limit it to just vegans," she said. "I want people to say, 'Hey, those are some great shoes,' and then find out they're vegan."

Inder Bedi, a vegan market pioneer with his 7-year-old Via Vegan handbag collection, has hesitated to offer a shoe collection. The designer wanted to wait until his company, whose Matt & Nat bags are available in 1,500 North American locations, was known for its style before its sensibility.

"We wouldn't go very far if we were known as a vegan company that sold handbags," he said. "We had to be a handbag company that happened to be vegan. "

Bedi will open his first store next spring in Montreal -- with a shoe selection.

"We need more fashion companies to do vegan shoes," he said. "We can make a vegan cake, but we can't make fashionable shoes."

There are few hard numbers on the vegan market, only anecdotal evidence of its size. And there are just a few celebrity vegans to popularize the concept: Former "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson has a cruelty-free clothing line, musician Moby has been an outspoken animal-rights activist and VegNews magazine dubbed actor Joaquin Phoenix a "vegan hunk."

But 60 years after Englishman Donald Watson split from the Vegetarian Society to found something called "veganism," the market is only now beginning to be outlined.

A 2003 Harris Interactive poll found that nearly 3 percent of respondents said they never eat meat, poultry or seafood; half that group said they don't eat dairy products, eggs or honey, either.

In a survey of 100,000 college students across the country earlier this year, 24 percent of respondents said they wanted vegan meals offered on campus, according to a study conducted by the ARAMARK food service company. Over the next two months, the firm will roll out vegan meals such as sweet Thai tofu stir-fry at two dozen campuses.

"That number kind of surprised us," said company spokesman Doug Warner. "But it made us believe that we had to provide options for vegans."

The vegan options in the Mission District's 2-year-old Otsu are growing. Aside from staples like cookbooks ("Foods That Don't Bite Back"), the shelves in the 400-square-foot store are filled with purses, shoulder bags, shoes and belts. Much of what's in the store is handmade by vegans.

"We'd rather give our money to individuals than to corporations that continue the same practices of harming the environment and factory farming," said co-owner Jeremy Crown. "We want to support a vegan lifestyle, a vegan economy."

Otsu is doing well enough to open a second store in Portland, Ore., this year. It's tapped into the same audience that has transformed VegNews, which debuted as a 24-page free newspaper in 2000, into a full-color, bimonthly lifestyle magazine. Subscriptions have tripled over each of the past three years for VegNews, which is located in San Francisco's Sunset District -- about a block from the zoo.

Despite that growth, "we have debates around the office about whether the world is ready for the word 'vegan,' " said Joseph Connelly, VegNews founding editor. "Personally, I think it is. We use it as much as possible.

"The writing is on the wall," Connelly said, predicting that the vegan market will continue to expand beyond its earthy-crunchy origins. "The hippie days are over."

Should the vegan shoe market mature, one of the vegan community's longest- running ethical debates will get a mainstream airing: What should new converts to veganism do with their leather shoes?

Some say throw them out immediately, as a covenant with one's conversion. No, say others, that would be just as wasteful as killing an animal to make the shoes in the first place.

There are those who opt for selling them to a secondhand store; some in San Francisco will even direct a portion of the sale to an animal-rights nonprofit.

"I say you should just keep wearing them until they're worn and then switch over," said Alternative Outfitters' Horrick. "Otherwise, that's just as wasteful."

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