Mammut

Challenge

Climate risks and the increasing demand for ambitious and robust climate strategies pose major challenges for apparel companies across the globe — and for outdoor apparel brands in particular. The viability of the outdoor industry hinges on preserving the environment — if nature is compromised, so are brands’ businesses.

At Swiss premium outdoor brand Mammut, sustainability has been flagged as a top priority. In 2018, the company launched its WE CARE sustainability strategy, setting targets across four key areas: clean production, animal welfare, reduced footprint and ethical production. In the same year, Mammut also became a founding signatory of the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, committing to develop and implement a robust and metrics-based climate strategy to reduce aggregate GHG emissions by 30% by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2050.

To fulfil this commitment, Mammut teamed up with Quantis to develop and implement its climate roadmap and ensure internal teams were engaged and ready to take action.

Insights

Transforming commitments into action to work towards sustainability goals is where apparel brands often get stuck. To bring clarity to what steps need to be taken to move the needle forward, brands need metrics to understand their impacts along the value chain and the areas with the greatest potential for improvement. To put these plans into motion and achieve targets, brands need the support of internal teams and stakeholders as well as other brands and retailers that share the same value chain. As climate strategy experts, Quantis was the ideal partner for this project.

Actions

As a first step to drive impact reduction, Quantis conducted a corporate carbon footprint for Mammut to establish a baseline against which the brand could measure its environmental performance and provide data-driven guidance to prioritize future initiatives. The findings of the assessment, along with several scenario analyses, were used to develop a clear roadmap for Mammut’s carbon reduction pathway. Quantis then facilitated interactive internal workshops with the Mammut project teams to identify potential reduction actions, develop a clear action plan, foster internal buy-in and demonstrate to teams how they contribute to the achievement of the brand’s climate goals.

Impact

The work provided Mammut with a solid baseline to support decision making and engage its teams. Mammut’s leadership sees the value and is now committed to SBTi. As a result of the sustainability awareness fostered by Quantis, all future projects considered at Mammut are now evaluated based on the potential carbon footprint. The goal is to ensure conscious decisions are made and progress towards net zero is carefully tracked.

Learnings

Data are critical for building a robust climate strategy, but collecting, compiling, converting, and verifying data can be a significant undertaking. Businesses can make the process easier by identifying early on what types of data will likely be important for their companies and spending most of their energy there. Documenting data sources is also important to streamline the process for future updates.

For a robust carbon footprint and future decision-making, two key pieces of information are critical: a reliable value for the amount of materials used and the climate change impact of a kilogram of that material.

Next steps

With their climate roadmap in place, Mammut is now working to put their strategy in action and begin making progress on their targets.

• Climate

• Fashion & Sporting Goods

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