Trending: Ratcheting Up to Sustainable Activewear, Inside and Out

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The outdoor apparel industry has apparently taken its role as stewards of the environment in which it plays to heart, as illustrated by a series of remarkable recent moves on the sustainability front — including the release of an industry-first transparency report from Icebreaker; and the textile sector’s first-ever Planetary Boundaries Assessment, from Houdini Sportswear; as well as the world’s first climate-positive outdoor footwear, from Icebug. And the progress continues …

Allied Feather & Down relaunches TrackMyDown platform for consumer and retailer education, traceability

Image credit: TrackMyDown

Allied Feather & Down — creators of
industry-leading responsible down sourcing is announcing the relaunch of its
proprietary TrackMyDown.com website, an educational
transparency tool designed to provide consumers and brands with all of the
information they may need about the down lining their jacket or sleeping bag.

After helping to create the now globally recognized Responsible Down
Standard (RDS) within its supply chain — in collaboration with The North
Face
— and gifting it to the Textile Exchange in 2014, Allied wanted to take
traceability in the global down insulation supply chain to the next level. The
new TrackMyDown platform provides a more robust
user experience for consumers at point of purchase and at home. The down used in
each product will also now be more easily tracked directly through partner
brands’ own websites with seamless integration of a new TrackMyDown widget. 

“TrackMyDown was built as a way to turn the down jacket, sleeping bag, comforter
or pillow inside out — allowing access to critical performance parameters and
additional information that were never known, thanks to a notoriously opaque
supply chain,” said Daniel Uretsky, President at Allied Feather & Down.
“Down has traditionally been a generic ingredient with, at best, a ‘fill power’
rating to communicate quality to the
consumer.

“The overall quality of the down inside a garment is incredibly complex and much
more than just fill power, however. Most consumers don’t even know what fill
power is, and as garment design and construction change, fill power becomes an
increasingly less important indicator of quality or performance. We thought it
necessary to develop a tool that could provide some of this important
information and engage the potential purchaser of a down product to help them
make more informed decisions.”

Founded in Vernon, Calif. in 1987, the family-owned and -operated Allied has
earned a reputation as the largest, most reliable and most responsible
supplier of raw material in the industry. Through the creation of the RDS and
TrackMyDown, Allied is committed to safeguarding the welfare of animals while
protecting the environment.

“Yes, it is incredibly important to know where your down came from in regards to
animal welfare, but there is much, much more that goes into producing
high-performing and sustainable insulation than simply sourcing — and nobody
is communicating that,” Uretsky adds. “We always saw the RDS and other standards
as simply the foundation for the real work, communicating the complexities and
positive environmental benefits to the consumer. But this couldn’t be done
without such robust standards in place, and is why we timed the initial launch
of TrackMyDown with the first-season, RDS-certified products were hitting the
shelves.”

TrackMyDown was born in Fall 2015 with five partner brands: Peak
Performance, Feathered Friends, Montane, Daniadown and
Merrell. Allied says there are now roughly 80 globally recognized partner
brands from the outdoor, lifestyle and fashion industries using the tool, with
more than 100 brands on board for Fall 2019 product lines — meaning, most
prominent active lifestyle brands will be using TrackMyDown.com hang tags on every down-insulated
garment at retail, creating powerful direct-to-consumer connections and brand
awareness.

“There is a lot of misinformation about down in the media. TrackMyDown seeks to
both assure the consumer that the material has been responsibly sourced, and
also that the material has been sustainably processed, and shows the exact
cleanliness and content of each lot,” Uretsky says. “When you see consumers
hesitating to purchase down products — arguably some of the most environmentally
friendly outerwear pieces available — simply because they are unclear of where
it comes from or do not understand how sustainable it can be, we realized it was
time to reinvent consumer traceability and education in our industry.”

Arc’teryx climbs into recommerce with Rock Solid Used Gear

Image credit: Arc’teryx

Meanwhile, Arc’teryx — the Vancouver-based design company
specializing in technical, high-performance apparel, outerwear and equipment —
has taken another step in its ongoing commitment to sustainable design: Following in the footsteps of fellow forward-thinking outdoor brands REI and The North Face, Arc’teryx has launched its own recommerce
program, Rock Solid Used Gear. Harkening back to the company’s original name when it was founded over
30 years ago, Rock Solid Used Gear is a repurposing hub designed to keep
excellent products in service as long as possible — and to lighten the company’s
environmental footprint.

Made possible by the company’s design team, who creates gear to outlive
its users’ adventures, Arc’teryx — whose down-filled products also adhere to
ALLIED’s Responsible Down Standard — will now buy back used gear in good
condition, clean and repair products with plenty of life left in them and resell
the items at a lower cost. The prolonged lifecycle allows customers to access
supremely technical gear for less while also minimizing the brand’s
environmental footprint.

"At Arc’teryx, we are more than designers — we are agents for change, leaning
into hard problems and applying a process and ethos that creates possibility,"
said Arc’teryx General Manager and President Jon Hoerauf. "We are framing
sustainability as a design problem. Strictly focusing on building leading gear
is no longer an option for us — we must apply the same design ethos to solving
problems of broader social and environmental relevance. Great gear should be
able to last through multiple users, and Rock Solid Used Gear is our solution."

As part of the Rock Solid Used Gear program offered in the US, customers can
bring used gear into local Arc’teryx stores or use the online mail-in portal to
start the trade in process. The gear will then be assessed and gear that is
deemed as lightly worn to excellent condition, with the inner label still
attached, will be eligible to receive a gift card of 20 percent of the product’s
original retail price. Any items that cannot be resold, but are still
functional, will be donated to organizations with outdoor programs that need
gear. The brand is exploring circular solutions such as repurposing and
upcycling for items that have reached the end of their useful life and cannot be
repaired to a functional state. The Rock Solid Used Gear program will also allow
customers to trade in products for different sizes or colors as their lives and
preferences change.

"Our company’s origins are in innovative design thinking to solve industry
challenges," said Director of Sustainability Drummond Lawson. "We
apply this same mentality to environmental problems. Our products are built to
last but, to keep them in service as long as feasible, we realized that our
business models also needed innovation. Rock Solid Used Gear is the result — a
platform that gets more users into great gear — and helps lower the footprint of
our company by spreading the impact of producing our gear over many more days of
use." 

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