Monday highlights: top products, collaborations and sustainability trends

It's time to celebrate the best of the best: clapping and cheering roared through Atrium 4 on the second day of the trade show as the ISPO Award winners were presented with their trophies. Because here, in the ISPO Award Exhibition Area, OutDoor by ISPO brought together the most innovative products of the sports and outdoor industry at a single glance.

At the ISPO Award Gathering on Monday afternoon, interested visitors and the creators of the innovative winning products gathered to celebrate, laugh and network. A special prize was awarded to the Peak 35 backpack by Ortovox - from now on it will carry the Special Label of the Public Choice Award, which is chosen by end consumers of the ISPO Collaborators Club only twice a year.

Benita Klingler, Ortovox PR & Communication Manager said at the awards ceremony, "The Public Choice Award is a real award, especially for our product developers, but also for the whole team, which has put so much work into the backpack. We are totally happy!"

How can the industry reconcile social and environmental responsibility with economic success? In the face of the pandemic and tottering supply chains, that was the overriding question on the first of two days at the Outdoor OutDoor Conference.

Tobias Gröber, head of the ISPO Group, set the direction right at the beginning of the conference: "We have to move from a reactive to an active supply chain!"

Antje von Dewitz, CEO of Vaude, showed that her sustainable corporate course as a climate-neutral company with a meat-free canteen and active promotion of remote work had a positive impact not only on revenue: "Sustainability is not just theory. It's something that does something to you, that feels good, and that's worth fighting for."

That just includes switching to suppliers who want to meet Vaude's green standards when others can't or won't.

At all, future-proof business only works together, at best even cross-industry. So Merijn Dols, Global Head of Open Innovation at Danone, presented at the OutDoor Conference Learnings from the food industry, which can also inspire the outdoor industry. "Danone, with the help of startups, has developed measures that allow us to measure the social and environmental footprint of our products. These were tangible improvements for the work of our teams in research & development."

For an industry with a promising future, no wagon mentality helps, he said, "We need to bring as many people together as possible. Yes, we are competitors for a piece of the pie, but together we can work to make the whole pie bigger."

Robert Metzke, global head of ESG at Philips, explained for the healthcare sector how the technology company is using the most modular high-tech equipment possible for hospitals and labs to increase the lifespan of its products and thus minimize recycling efforts. Facilitating recycling is a concept that Vaude also strives for in its outdoor products, for example by using only one material instead of complex material combinations in its outdoor items. The goal according to Antje von Dewitz: "We have to close the loop!"

Sustainability occupies the outdoor industry as never before, and is therefore a major topic at OutDoor by ISPO 2022. Many manufacturers rely on recyclable materials, circular economy and climate neutrality in the manufacturing process for their products. On the Guided Sustainability Tour through the exhibition halls, media representatives and influencers were also able to discover the latest sustainability trends of the exhibitors.