Happen Ventures partners with Burlington on shoe diversion initiative

When Burlington, New Jersey-based Burlington Stores Inc. found itself with a single shoe problem, the retailer knew just who to reach out to—Happen Ventures, a Puerto Rican startup that matches excess, overstock and expiring inventory with nearby nonprofit partner organizations.

“We’ve done a lot of projects for major retailers with really oddball items that they’re just kind of like, they’re going to landfill—you want to take a crack at it?” Happen Ventures CEO Jessica Gonzalez says. “We’re like, absolutely.”

Burlington had found itself with thousands of single display shoes that had lost their pairs. These shoes accumulated over time, creating a significant storage problem. Burlington needed a sustainable and affordable way to dispose of them, but their options were limited as they faced several hurdles.

Discounters and liquidators couldn’t take them because they only accept complete pairs. Recycling shoes was another option, but the cost was too high. Sending the shoes to a landfill was not an acceptable solution, Gonzalez says.

Happen Ventures found a way to repurpose the single shoes by distributing them to The Global Medical Relief Fund, a Staten Island, New York-based nonprofit organization that distributed them to veteran amputees and community members who only needed one shoe or had different-sized feet.

Through the Single Shoe Initiative, Happen Ventures was able to connect four pallets of single shoes, or about four tons of shoes, with new owners.

“[Burlington] loved the single shoe initiative,” Gonzalez says. “What they loved about it that we actually thought about them. A lot of the time, whenever there’s shoe donations and whatnot, people don’t really think about them going to amputees. Especially since we had the single shoes, it just made perfect sense.”

RELATED: Happen Ventures is committed to landfill diversion through beneficial reuse

Before launching the Single Shoe Initiative, Happen Ventures had been working with Burlington for about a year through a program it calls the Benefit Box. In the back of each of about 160 Burlington stores, Happen Ventures has set up an area where items that are unsellable are put to the side.

“These are items that are lotions, conditioners, shampoos that are off-season or unsellable for whatever reason,” Gonzalez says. “Maybe the packaging is not in good condition, or the top fell off. It doesn’t mean the items are still not usable.”

Every time the boxes are filled up, the store can scan a QR code to ping Happen Ventures, which will coordinate a time for a nonprofit to visit the location and pick up the items. Happen Ventures generates a donation receipt for Burlington, a process that happens seamlessly with an app for minimal intervention by staff.

A lot of these items would be classified as hazardous waste, Gonzalez says, which is very expensive to dispose of—about $1.25 per pound plus fees. By diverting these items instead, the companies are paying anywhere from 50 to 70 percent less than what they would pay for hazardous waste disposal, she says.

“We’ve been able to divert thousands of pounds of landfill-bound items to nonprofits directly at a cost that’s neutral to throwing it away,” Gonzalez says. “You’re paying to throw it away. Instead you could pay to donate them and pay a fraction of the cost.”

Through the Benefit Box program, Happen Ventures has taken more than 4,000 pounds of hazardous waste items and diverted them from landfills to communities in 22 different states and Puerto Rico.

Gonzalez says she and her team relish finding new and innovative ways to divert materials for partner companies. 

“What’s great is now we could do [the Single Shoe Initiative] program annually,” Gonzalez says. “So with the display shoes, whenever they swap them out, now they don’t have to throw them out. And now we have a place for them to go where they could actually be utilized.”