This Luxury Car Brand Just Made the Smartest Investment in Animal-Free Leather

Anant chats with Stephanie Downs, CEO and co-founder of Uncaged Innovations, about a 26-year entrepreneurial journey from internet marketing to biomaterials.

Stephanie describes how Uncaged uses grain proteins and waste byproducts to create ‘Elevate’, an animal-free material designed to mimic the properties of animal collagen, in her telling an industry first. She discusses the company’s partnership with Jaguar Land Rover on plant-based automotive interiors and says Uncaged has reached full-scale production without building its own factory.

She also takes aim at the incumbent material, ‘dead skin treated with toxic chemicals and coated in plastic’, and at the $85 billion leather market she says Uncaged is targeting. Also covered: expansion into footwear, ‘Elevate 3D’ exotic-skin alternatives, boutique brand partners across nine countries, and further luxury and automotive announcements she says are on the way.