“PRODUCE LESS!”

What did you work with in 2019 and what do you do today?

I was Senior Corporate Responsibility Manager at Mammut. In 2020 I started consulting, among others for the European Outdoor Group. Today I am the CEO of Rotauf, a small Swiss outdoor brand with a radical approach to sustainability. We eliminated all toxic chemicals, only use organic or recycled materials, and produce all our products in Switzerland. Often even fabric production and wet processing takes place in Switzerland – which is a challenge. Like many European countries, Switzerland used to have a large clothing industry. Nowadays, most manufacturers are gone, but we have found companies that survived in their niches, which have typically nothing to do with outdoor clothing.

You and Rebecca Johansson were the initiators of Outdoor Futures. What are your feelings that the project didn’t survive?

I am sad that we didn’t manage to stick to the project. It was a very dynamic group, with people from different brands, media, science, and subject matter experts, working on a shared mission. Four years later I can see that we managed to cover many key aspects, no really big topic has emerged that we didn’t have on the radar back then.

What did you bring with you back to your daily work?

With Rotauf, I became very involved in nearshoring. Which the pandemic also showed, can be good for many reasons, not only sustainability. This is a reason why I chose to start working for Rotauf. Producing in Switzerland is so expensive that we could never afford to sell with large discounts!

Also, the need for more industry collaborations. One of my first projects as a consultant was to help European Outdoor Group set up the framework for their Climate Action Program. I think this program has been developed into a very good example of how the industry can work together.

Looking at today, what do you wish had happened, but hasn’t yet?

The transition from selling physical products to selling services. Many outdoor brands justify their focus on selling more and more products by saying “It’s better if people buy jackets from us than from our less sustainable competitors.” Our products will always have ecological footprints.

What do you hope will happen in the future?

That the industry starts addressing overproduction. Almost all brands overbuy materials, just in case their forecasts are too low, and produce more than they think they can sell, for the same reasons. Retailers also want to have their safety margins, meaning overproduction all along the value chain.

In the end, many products are sold with massive discounts. This is just how the system works. A pretty sick system if you ask me!

Instead, we should ask ourselves: Can we set economic growth targets and at the same time set goals to produce less? And imagine if the whole industry would agree: Let’s only sell at full price! That would be a systemic change – and I think it would be wiser, from many perspectives.