What if climate change ended up making some outdoor brands disappear? The question might sound provocative. And yet it's exactly the one raised by Outdoor Sports Valley and the UTMB Group during a talk held in Chamonix, titled "Climate Change is Reshaping Outdoor, Are You Ready?"
Thibault Liebenguth, of AIR coop, and Frédéric Mô, of Decathlon France and Simond, came to talk about a subject that goes well beyond simply cutting carbon footprint: adapting the outdoor industry to a changing world.
And that's where the subject becomes particularly interesting to me. Because we often talk about the environment in the outdoor world through the lens of responsibility: how do we reduce our impact? Maybe we should add a second question: how do we keep existing in an environment that's changing?
Climate change doesn't just threaten our playgrounds
We naturally think of melting glaciers, droughts, or snow seasons becoming more unpredictable. But the consequences go much further. Climate change also affects:
- Raw materials, whose availability and cost depend directly on climate balances.
- Factories and supply chains, often located in areas that are themselves exposed.
- Transport, which can be disrupted by extreme weather events.
- Sporting events and sales seasons, built around increasingly unpredictable weather conditions.
- And, ultimately, brands' business models.
The outdoor world depends directly on climate and on places. But an outdoor brand also depends on a value chain that can be weakened by those same phenomena. During the talk, Frédéric Mô shared a fairly dizzying figure: according to IPCC projections cited on the occasion, 60% of Decathlon's production is said to sit in areas that could become uninhabitable or difficult to operate in by 2100 (Outdoor Sports Valley, recap of the OSV x UTMB Group talk).
In other words, the problem isn't just whether we'll still be able to go trail running, skiing or mountaineering. We also need to ask whether we'll still be able to manufacture the gear that lets us practice these sports.
Reducing your impact is no longer enough
This is probably one of the most striking takeaways from this discussion. A company can cut its emissions, work on eco-design and improve its products. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's prepared for the changes to come.
Thibault Liebenguth draws a distinction between reducing impact and adapting. And between the two, a third risk even appears: maladaptation, meaning putting in place solutions that let you maintain an existing model without actually addressing the underlying problem (Outdoor Sports Valley, post on the OSV x UTMB Group talk).
The question then becomes fairly blunt: are we really adapting our model, or are we simply trying to keep the current model running for as long as possible?
And for outdoor brands?
This is where the subject becomes, in my view, particularly interesting for marketing. For a long time, a brand's competitive edge could rest on product, performance, image and community. Tomorrow, we may need to add resilience: diversifying suppliers, securing raw materials, producing closer to markets, developing repair and resale, slowing down collection turnover, planning for several scenarios instead of depending on a single model.
These are industrial decisions, obviously. But they also become communication and marketing subjects. Because how do you tell an outdoor brand's story when its playground is changing? How do you keep selling a jacket, a pair of shoes or mountain gear in a world where the conditions for practicing these sports are shifting? And above all: how do you communicate about adaptation without falling into greenwashing?
The future of the outdoor industry might not just need to be more sustainable. It will need to be more robust.
Robustness over performance at any cost
That's ultimately the word that stands out from this discussion: robustness. Thibault Liebenguth draws in particular on the work of biologist Olivier Hamant to question our obsession with permanent optimization (Thibault Liebenguth's recap of the talk). An extremely optimized company can be very high-performing when everything works, but particularly fragile when one part of the system breaks down.
And the outdoor industry is particularly exposed to these disruptions. Because it depends on living systems, on places, on climate, just as a mountain region's appeal depends on the environment it's selling. But also on globalized production chains, which are much harder to turn into a story than a simple sports partnership.
Personal takeaway
So yes, some outdoor brands could disappear because of climate change. Not necessarily because they refused to reduce their impact. But perhaps because they didn't sufficiently anticipate how climate change was going to transform their own business.
And that might be the real challenge for the outdoor industry: no longer just trying to perform better in today's world, but learning to stay relevant in tomorrow's. A challenge that, like activating a sports partnership or choosing an ambassador, no longer plays out only in the numbers of a strategy, but in a brand's ability to project itself into a different world.
If the outdoor world's playing field is changing, does your brand have a plan B, or only a communication plan?
