GREEN SHOOTS: No longer cooped-up consumers have been making tracks to the great outdoors for months, and brands are trying to meet them there with free activities, preferred hikes advice and occasional giveaways.
Jack Wolfskin is one of the latest companies to amp up its commitment through a new partnership with the free streaming platform WaterBear Network, which aims to raise global awareness about the preservation, restoration and expansion of wild lands, wild animals and wild plants. As a founding partner, Jack Wolfskin will have a dedicated channel on the WaterBear Network app and platform, which debuts this spring.
The two parties will also team up to produce a series of films that highlight the discovery of nature, conservation and re-wilding.
Last year the National Park Service received 297 million recreation visits — a 25.3 percent gain compared to 2020.
While video content is increasingly a pursuit with a wide swath of outdoor and fashion labels, land preservation is more engrained in the industry and it remains a hot-button issue for some. Patagonia has said it will boycott the 2023 Outdoor Retailer show in Utah unless pledges are made to preserve lands. The company’s chief executive officer Ryan Gellert recently said the company will not return to the trade show in Salt Lake City until a firm commitment is made to protect the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. REI and The North Face have also vowed to boycott the trade show when it returns to Utah from Denver.
Last fall L.L. Bean built upon its founding sponsorship of MasterCard’s “Priceless Planet Coalition,” by pledging an additional $500,000 to supports its mission to restore 100 million trees by 2025. One of the greatest champions of preserving land around the globe, former Patagonia CEO Kristine Tompkins. As founder and CEO of Tompkins Conservation, she committed to expanding Chile’s national parkland by 10 million acres in Patagonia in 2018. She and her late husband Doug, a founder of the North Face and Patagonia, first became dedicated to land conservation in the ’90s.
Source: WWD