Patagonia, The North Face and Above The Clouds on why ESG is a differentiator, not a compliance exercise

Executives from Patagonia, The North Face and brand consultancy Above The Clouds told the ISPO Summit in Amsterdam on Tuesday that sustainability is a business opportunity, not just a compliance exercise. The panel, “ESG Is Your Opportunity: Why It Matters More Than Ever, For Generations to Come”, brought together Hap Klopp, founder of The North Face; Nina Hajikhanian, general manager EMEA at Patagonia; and Fredrik Ekström, brand and marketing strategist at Above The Clouds.

Klopp told the audience that brands should stop waiting for certainty before they act. “Branding around sustainability is your distinct advantage,” he said. “It’s probably going to piss off some of the people when you do that, and that’s good, because the only way you’re going to generate a real following is when you have some decisive action. If you’re basically like everybody else, you’re not going to motivate anybody.”

For outdoor companies, he said, the case is existential. “If there’s no wilderness, there’s not going to be any business in the future. So if that isn’t a call to action, I don’t know what would be.”

Consumers care, but struggle to translate

Ekström challenged the idea that consumers have stopped caring about sustainability. “I would say that they care a lot,” he said. “It’s just that they don’t really understand what’s going on, and they don’t feel that the brands are supporting them with that kind of knowledge and trust and behaviour and consistency and action.”

He described a “knowledge paradox”: consumers want more information but feel overwhelmed by it. “It’s not a caring problem in the mind of the consumer, it’s more of a translation issue,” Ekström said. He urged brands to “move beyond the claims and not compete on compliance, because at the end of the day, most of the brands will be compliant.” Instead, he said, brands should build a “brand belief system”, in which “the consumer trusts you, they understand you, they see what the value is.”

Patagonia on radical transparency

Hajikhanian said Patagonia measures success by how far it can move the wider industry rather than by its own competitive advantage. She cited Patagonia’s Yulex natural rubber wetsuits as an example. The company says it was the first to launch them, in 2016, after 10 years of work to replace neoprene, and other surf brands, including Billabong, have since adopted the material.

“We are only a very small player in the apparel industry, and we are very clear about the fact that it will take more than just us to create meaningful change,” she said. “But we have a big voice.”

She described Patagonia’s approach as “radical transparency”, including its 150-page progress report, Work in Progress, which was launched in 2025. Hajikhanian said the company repaired 174,000 items in 2025 but has no solution yet for 8,500 products. “We can only solve these issues as an industry together, which means we have to be able to talk about them, but also sit with the discomfort,” she said.

“I think that actually customers are much smarter than we sometimes as businesses think that they are,” she added. “They’re the ones that hold businesses accountable.”

“We just need to be good”

Klopp said The North Face was founded on Henry David Thoreau’s idea that “in wildness is the preservation of the world”, and on the belief that people who spend time in nature become “better stewards of the Earth”.

He argued that brands do not need mass scale to succeed with a sustainability-led strategy. “You don’t need all the customers in the world. You just need enough to build a business,” he said. “What’s wrong with a 10 million euro business that makes a million after tax? That’s not so bad.”

According to Klopp, younger consumers will drive demand: “It’s existential for them. It’s no longer academic.” He also said that cameras, the internet and new technologies mean that “greenwashing is called out”.

He closed with a warning against waiting for perfection. “Perfect is the enemy of good,” he said. “We need to just be good.”

About ISPO

ISPO is an international trade fair for the sporting goods, outdoor and winter sports industries. The 2026 edition took place from November 3 to 5 at RAI Amsterdam, moving from Munich and shifting to early November to better align with global buying cycles. It is organised by Raccoon Media Group with partner Messe München, and the ISPO Leaders’ Summit took place on the first day of the event.