Shopping centers are intentionally designed to excite and overwhelm, pushing people toward impulse purchases with bright lights, loud music, and layouts that lure you into stores you never intended to browse. They are the pinnacle of capitalism and overconsumption, which is why it seems so deeply ironic that Veja — a brand closely associated with slow fashion and sustainability-forward supply chains — named its concept store Centre Commercial (“shopping center” in French).

Today, Veja is opening the fourth store bearing the Centre Commercial name. Situated in Bastille — the same Parisian neighborhood where Veja was founded in 2004 — the 200-square-meter store is split into menswear, womenswear, footwear, and lifestyle products, with a focus on quality, creativity, and purpose. While sustainability is central to how brands are selected, it takes a back seat when it comes to store merchandising. This is why the stores are called Centre Commercial — it’s both a provocation to customers to rethink their shopping habits, and a playful wink at the sustainability crowd.

Each store has a different brand mix and product focus. “In 2010, we wanted to create a Veja store, but it looked a bit sad, because we only had three or four models,” says co-founder Sébastien Kopp. “That’s why we decided to gather other brands in one place, because we had met so many incredible brands along the way and we wanted to use the success of Veja to help them.”

In 2013, Veja followed up with a second Centre Commercial, this time specializing in childrenswear, because many of its original customers had become parents, and were looking to extend the same standards to their children’s clothes. And in 2025, Veja added an outdoors shop to its roster, once it noticed that customers were spending more time outside and wanted to highlight performance wear brands that aligned with its values.

Like the first store, the latest — on Rue de Charonne — will offer a curation of categories. “I don’t like shops that are too big or mix too many things,” says Kopp, noting that this is, in fact, the antithesis of a shopping center. “I like specific places for specific products.”

Centre Commercial stocks more than 200 brands across the four locations. Rather than sourcing brands based on public-facing sustainability claims, the in-house buying team scrutinizes the supply chains underpinning them. “We look at how brands source and where they produce. Are they using production countries that respect workers? What are the workers being paid? What kind of materials are they using?” explains Kopp.

The idea is to stock brands with a more holistic approach to sustainability, rather than piecemeal products or lines using organic and recycled materials. There’s a strong emphasis on local production: cult classic Birkenstock manufactures the vast majority of its shoes in Germany, while Paraboot, which specializes in men’s boat shoes, has a factory at the foot of the French Alps. Likewise, many of the brands are small independent outfits that uplift craftsmanship and prefer high-quality, durable natural materials. Among them are London label Studio Nicholson, Madrid-based menswear Camisas Manolo, and Antwerp-based knitwear brand Howlin by Morrison, as well as heavy-hitters like Patagonia and C.P. Company.

Building a multi-brand physical retail network from scratch is no small feat, which is why Centre Commercial has an e-commerce platform to boost sales outside Paris, and also why it regularly hosts book launches and community events in-store, giving people more reasons to visit. It’s not an easy market, and that’s before you add the complexity of only sourcing brands with a sustainability focus or taking the time to visit and audit their supply chains.

“It is complicated every time,” says Kopp. “There are not too many brands like this in the world. You have to source them and convince them to work with you, but we also try to visit their factories and production facilities.”

As the industry and its regulators continue to raise the bar for sustainability, so does Veja. “The process is ongoing rather than fixed,” says Kopp. “We maintain regular conversations with the brands we work with and continuously reassess our selection as standards evolve. Like any retailer, we sometimes decide not to continue with certain brands. These decisions can stem from different factors, whether it’s a loss of coherence with our vision, changes in quality, or simply a different direction. More than reacting to scandals, we are interested in building long-term relationships with brands that show consistency, integrity, and a commitment to making better products.”

Product first, sustainability always

In many ways, Centre Commercial captures Veja’s Trojan horse approach to sustainability. The product comes first, the marketing is minimal, and the supply chain does the heavy lifting on sustainability, so consumers don’t need to worry about it.

It’s also indicative of where sustainability is moving in general — faced with tighter greenwashing rules, political backlash and competing crises, many brands are rolling back their sustainability messaging, breaking the subject down into its composite parts to keep consumers engaged. Rather than broadstroke sustainability claims, they are honing in on specifics: durability, high-quality materials, craftsmanship, and local production.

This is the way Veja prefers to operate, says Kopp. “A lot of people don’t know exactly what they’re buying. We get emails all the time from people who have been wearing Veja for years and they only just realized what we do in our supply chain. I think that’s when it is the most convincing: when you already love the product and you realize it’s more sustainable after.”

Still, he’s convinced that sustainability sells, even if it isn’t the primary motivator. “If you have all the information, and your staff know what they are doing, you can transmit your care to other people, and they become interested,” he explains. “When we started Centre Commercial, everybody told us it would be a disaster, but it’s working super well. Even if only 5% or 10% of our customers know what they are buying, they will spread the word.”

For now, Veja is in the fortunate position of viewing Centre Commercial as “an expression of [its] point of view”, rather than a profit driver, adds Kopp. “Growth has never been an objective in itself. We could imagine bringing the concept to other cities in the future, but only if we felt we could create the same sense of community and maintain the same level of curation. More than anything, it’s a place where we can bring together the brands, products, and ideas that inspire us and build lasting relationships with our customers.”