How Half the Sky opened ethical and sustainable shoe brand co-founder Natalie Chow’s eyes to human trafficking and slavery

Non-fiction book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009), by Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-and-wife journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, examines the numerous ways women are mistreated around the world, and looks at possible solutions, arguing that their oppression represents the single biggest moral challenge of the modern era.

Natalie Chow, co-founder of Hong Kong-based sustainable and ethical footwear brand Kibo, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.

I read it in 2012 or 2013. I had gone to an event that was all about justice, at The Vine Church, in Wan Chai. I attend another English-speaking church, and I’d heard about the event there.

I thought I’d check it out, with absolutely no expectations, and I got the book there.

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On the cover, it doesn’t say anything about human trafficking or slavery – there’s a lot of women – so I didn’t really know what it was about.

Having lived in very privileged cities like Hong Kong and Melbourne, slavery was not something that I’d come across, but it shed light on how prevalent the issue is.

I was surprised by the horrific facts in it, and that started everything for me. I thought, “Why aren’t people talking about this?”

I still had a day job that I wasn’t planning to quit, but I was just so shocked. It’s so prevalent, but other than at this event, I didn’t hear anyone talking about it.

I went on a trip to Indonesia and met victims of sex trafficking, to see with my own eyes, with real human beings in front of me.

I started looking into successful fashion start-ups in other places, and they all made their products in China.

I worked in marketing, branding, PR and communications (for brands including L’Oréal, Shu Uemura, Loewe and Estée Lauder), but I did get a taste of product development when I was working in Japan in 2015.

My employer started to look into ethical compliance – and found that they did not comply. It shocked me: you are one of the leading companies in the world, and you have sketchy production sources.

There are so many layers that you can’t even imagine.

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I’m familiar with retail, and luxury retail especially, and I thought, “Are we paying the people who deserve to be paid?” Often, this is not the case.

Then, as we delve into materials, they have to be sustainable and ethically sourced. Sustainable practices have to start from clean production and ethical practices with traceable materials.

Oftentimes we overlook this huge part of the supply chain. So the very core of Kibo wasn’t eco-friendliness – it was making everything ethical.