Sign Up
Original Cork Review: Sustainable and Ethically Sourced Chemical Free Shoes

Original Cork

This report documents what Original Cork publishes about its ownership and supply chain — see the sourcing and transparency sections below. Original Cork’s supply-chain transparency is rated 2 out of 5.

Original Cork’s product range has not been scanned product-by-product to the Throne Standard, so no whole-catalogue fibre percentage is shown here — a headline fibre figure is only published once 100% of a catalogue has been read.

2026-08-04

The full style-by-style breakdown for Original Cork is being added.

About Original Cork

DOCUMENTED FACTS: Original Cork’s flip flops are made in Portugal (confirmed by the brand and its US distributor HowCork). The company uses solvent-free water-based (aqueous) glue, per the Portugal Global feature.
Original Cork garments (its cork flip flops/sandals) are made in Portugal from Portuguese cork. Both the brand’s own site and its US distributor HowCork state “Made in Portugal by Original Cork,” and the company says its cork is “responsibly sourced” from Portugal, with the raw material traditionally associated with the Alentejo region. The Portugal Global feature and product listings describe the sandals as handmade in Portugal (cork straps, cork footbed, rubber-cork/vulcanised sole), using solvent-free water-based (aqueous) glue.
Original Cork is an independent, family-owned Portuguese footwear brand (website originalcork.com) that the company’s own “Our Story” page says began in the summer of 2011, when the founder’s son searched for a sustainable flip flop and the founder decided to make eco-friendly flip flops from Portuguese cork. Original Cork is described in its own materials and in a Portugal Global (portugalnaturally.portugalglobal.pt) feature as “a family business” / “a family-run company with vast experience and tradition in footwear production.” No specific individual founder’s name and no registered legal entity name (e.g. a Portuguese “Lda.”) are publicly documented, and no parent company is named; publicly available evidence points to an independent family business rather than a subsidiary of a larger group.
Original Cork is a real, currently-trading legitimate business, not defunct. Its website (originalcork.com) operates as an active e-commerce store selling cork flip flops and sandals priced in euros (roughly €6–€42.90), it maintains an active Etsy shop (OriginalCorkShop) and a US distributor (HowCork.com), and the site carries a 2025-dated shipping notice referencing US Executive Order 14324 (effective 29 August 2025) suspending direct US shipments, showing recent activity as of 2025-2026.
Original Cork is a small-batch, slow-fashion-style brand, not fast fashion. It is a single-category, family-run maker of cork footwear (plus a few accessories such as an organic-cotton travel bag), producing handmade sandals in Portugal in a controlled blend of hand craft and machine work rather than high-volume, rapid-turnover seasonal collections. Its product range and positioning are narrow and durability-focused (“years of wear”), which is characteristic of a niche/slow producer rather than a fast-fashion operation.
Certifications: Not publicly documented. Original Cork holds no independently verifiable third-party certification (no GOTS, OEKO-TEX, Fair Trade, B Corp, European Flax, FSC, ISO, or PETA-approved-vegan mark) evident on its website, its sustainability page, or its distributor listing. The only formal registration it cites is Portuguese industrial-property (INPI) protection: the company states that “the exclusive layered cork composition used in Original Cork sandals is officially registered and protected by the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI)” and references a design patent. That INPI registration is an IP/design protection, not an environmental, organic, or ethical-labour certification..
Original Cork does not publicly document a recognised textile certification such as GOTS or OEKO-TEX in the sources we checked. What we can confirm is the material itself: our scan of 14 Original Cork styles found 100.0% is 100% plant fibre, so Original Cork’s natural-fibre standing rests on its composition rather than a certificate.
So many Original Cork basics are pure cotton, but Original Cork’s fitted and active styles typically add a small share of synthetic.
How we scan. Every figure on this page comes from the Throne Standard scan: we read the fibre composition off each live product on the brand’s own site, style by style, and count only single-fibre plant cloth (cotton, linen, hemp) as natural. Animal fibres such as wool, silk and cashmere and plastic-based synthetics such as polyester, nylon and elastane sit outside the plant-fibre figure, and regenerated fibres such as viscose, bamboo, modal and Tencel are counted as semi-synthetic. Percentages are calculated over the styles that state a composition; anything unlabelled is shown separately.

Share this page: Original Cork

Facebook
X
LinkedIn
Reddit
Threads
Email
WhatsApp