PARIS — Former Nike executive Noel Kinder has joined the board of materials innovation company Uncaged Innovations as the company scales up the production of its bio-based leather alternative.
The appointment comes after the company, which was founded by Stephanie Downs and Xiaokun Wang in 2020, closed a $5.6 million seed round last July, and began its entry into the consumer market through partnerships with 10 independent fashion brands last November.
Kinder, served as chief sustainability officer at Nike from 2018 until the company cut its headcount in the sustainability sector in 2024. He said the Uncaged Innovations’ brand partnerships and capacity to scale makes it one of the most promising next-gen materials in the market.
“One of the things that I bring to Uncaged is the perspective of how important it is to reach commercial scale and the impact that comes with that,” Kinder told WWD. Footwear is one of the key categories where Uncaged’s material can make the biggest impact, Kinder believes.
“This is very much a start-up, and they’ve had an incredibly passionate interest, certainly from the luxury space, and some early interest from automotive as well,” he said.
Downs previously told WWD that the company is currently working with “one of the largest luxury brands” on a handbag collaboration that is expected to be revealed this year.
The commitments in place from brands to work together on iterating new versions of the material is “critical to the long-term adoption and impact at scale,” he said.
The Elevate x Stow London handbags.
Courtesy Uncaged Innovations
The company’s flagship material is called Elevate, and is made from grain protein fused with plant-based elements to create collagen-like scaffolding with its BioFuze technology. The company is in production on roll-to-roll material at a factory in the U.S. and can produce more than a million square meters of material a year. It has two additional factory partnerships in place should it need to scale up with additional capacity.
Kinder added that Uncaged Innovations’ capacity has it poised to be a success story in the category.
“There have been so many other alternatives over the past few years that were really promising, but had a really hard time getting to commercial scale and, frankly, meeting performance specifications for the applications that they were intended for,” he noted.
Uncaged has formed partnerships with brands from the beginning to fine-tune material performance for different sectors, including luxury.
Bringing in his 25 years in the footwear industry, Kinder views the partnerships in the development stage as a key growth indicator.
“Having been on the other side of that, that’s really important,” he said, citing performance, environmental performance in relation to the current material and making the new product cost competitive are the key concerns for businesses.
“Going from a seed scale material to, you know, hundreds of thousands of yards, if not millions of yards, that’s a really big jump. Having relationships with customers that are really formed on the basis of partnership and thoughtful and deliberate is really, really important,” he said.
Making the business case for new materials is particularly important post-pandemic, when many businesses’ big sustainability ambitions fizzled. As a result, they have pulled back from previously stated targets.
“What you will see in the future is a lot more thoughtful approach to sustainability and commitments to things that you can actually control, and material substitution is one of those,” he said. “You’ll continue to see companies in this industry look for alternatives to the commodity materials that we’ve all used for decades and decades, and focus on those things, rather than these bigger, broad commitments.”
Kinder said that during his time working in the footwear space, he has seen many leather alternatives put forward, and feels Uncaged’s product, scalability and potential applications across industries is one of the most promising so far.
“For me to get excited about [the product], that was a green flag for me,” he added.
