Salomon's 2025 Impact Report: when growth outpaces sustainability

A 31% revenue surge, a 16% carbon increase, and a sustainability team honest enough to publish both. Salomon’s 2025 Impact Report is one of the more intellectually rigorous ESG documents to emerge from the outdoor performance segment this cycle: not because it reports perfection, but because it doesn’t pretend to.

The report lands at a moment when the tension between extreme growth and genuine environmental progress has become impossible to paper over. Salomon isn’t alone in facing it. On, which disclosed similar dynamics in its own reporting, and Lululemon, which has grappled with the Scope 3 math of a fast-scaling DTC model, are navigating the same structural bind: the faster you grow, the harder it is to shrink your absolute footprint. What makes Salomon’s 2025 report notable for our readers is not the ambition it declares but the honesty with which it describes the gap.

Why cutting emissions per euro of revenue is not enough

The most counterintuitive data point in the report is not buried in the appendix. It sits in the carbon section: In 2025, Salomon emitted a total of 366 ktCO2e, up 16 percent compared to 2024. The company’s own science-based target pathway requires absolute emission reductions. The report acknowledges this plainly:

“our current trajectory highlights a gap between our absolute emissions and our long-term climate commitments.”

The company responds by introducing an intensity-based lens alongside the absolute figures. Emissions per euro of revenue fell 34 percent between 2022 and 2025, a meaningful operational efficiency improvement. But the report is clear-eyed enough to note that intensity progress “has not yet translated into a reduction in absolute emissions.”

This is the core tension the document holds throughout. It is also the tension running across the outdoor and performance segment more broadly.

Of that 366 ktCO2e, 98 percent falls under Scope 3, meaning emissions generated across the value chain rather than within Salomon’s own operations. Within Scope 3, purchased goods and services account for 82 percent of Scope 3 emissions. The arithmetic is clear: unless the supply chain decarbonizes as production grows, absolute emissions will continue to rise.

Products: the 9% problem

The responsible product framework is where the growth tension shows most clearly. Salomon’s 2030 target is for 100 percent of key products (excluding hardgoods) to reach Level 1 (Champions) or Level 2 (Eco-designed) status. In 2025, that figure was 9 percent.

The breakdown by category deserves close attention:

The apparel performance of 54 percent is the headline achievement. The footwear figure is the harder reality. Footwear is also where Salomon’s commercial identity and fastest-growing category, led by the sportstyle collection, most visibly sits. Trail shoes, lifestyle crossovers and performance running all fall within this segment.

The report is transparent about why footwear lags: EVA (ethylene vinyl acetate) and synthetic rubber, the materials most critical to midsole and outsole performance, currently have no recycled alternatives that meet durability and performance requirements. The report states this explicitly: “current alternatives fail to meet durability and performance requirements.” And:

“Meaningful progress will require rethinking entire product systems, not just replacing materials.”

That is a technical constraint that applies equally to every performance footwear brand in the sector.

The methodology note adds important context. Salomon introduced a new Eco-design Product Scorecard in 2025, developed with Quantis. Under the prior method, 9 percent of softgoods qualified as eco-designed. Under the new scorecard, which captures a broader range of eco-design levers beyond materials, the 2026 SS/FW season already reaches 40 percent for softgoods. The company is explicit that this “does not reflect a sudden improvement in performance, but rather a methodological change.” That transparency supports the figure’s credibility.

Materials: the gap between preferred and purchased

Preferred materials (recycled, bio-based, or responsibly certified) represented 17 percent of Salomon’s priority materials in 2025, up from 12.1 percent in 2024. Priority materials cover 62 percent of total material volume by weight.

Two data points stand out for different reasons. First, preferred wool fell from 22 percent to 7.7 percent. The report attributes the year-on-year variation to production cycles and methodology, which is a standard explanation but light on detail.

Second, preferred leather remains at 0 percent even though all leather is sourced from Leather Working Group (LWG) Gold or Silver-rated tanneries. LWG is not currently classified as a “preferred” system under Textile Exchange methodology, which highlights how voluntary benchmarks can diverge.

On the PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) front, 93 percent of products were free from intentionally added PFAS by the end of 2025, against a 2025 target of 100 percent. The 7-percentage-point gap against the self-imposed deadline is not framed as a failure. It is disclosed as an area where the technical and supply-chain transition is still incomplete, with additional detail provided in the report.

Supply chain: 86% is not 100%

Salomon works with 42 Tier 1 finished goods suppliers across 17 production countries, including the six Amer Sports -owned factories for winter sports equipment. The 2030 target is 100 percent social compliance for Tier 1 and strategic Tier 2 suppliers.

The most common audit findings – work hours and overtime management, record keeping and operational safety – align with issues flagged across the industry. The report notes that living-wage targets remain a long-term objective, with measurement underway. In 2024, 23 Tier 1 factories participated in wage-data collection, covering 93 percent of forecasted procurement spending.

The supplier data also offers an early signal on circularity. Salomon currently runs repair services from three stores in France (Annecy, Lyon, Toulouse). In 2025, it completed 380 apparel and bag repairs and 79 footwear repairs across those locations. It is also piloting a recycling program with TerraCycle at six retail locations in France and the UK in 2026.

These are pilots, not systems – the scale question remains open.

The SGIE read: what this means beyond outdoor

The conventional framing of the Salomon Impact Report is an outdoor brand making progress on sustainability. Our read is different.

What this report actually documents is the economics of extreme-growth brands operating within a finite environmental envelope, and the arithmetic that makes that so hard.

This is the same structural challenge facing On – which has disclosed similar dynamics – and, at a different point on the growth curve, brands like Arc’teryx and Hoka (within Deckers). The pattern is consistent: brands growing revenues above 20–30 percent per year will, absent either radical supply-chain transformation or a deliberate growth ceiling, struggle to achieve absolute Scope 3 reductions within current SBTi timelines.

The question is not whether brands like Salomon are serious about sustainability. They are. The question is whether the current generation of sustainability tools – preferred materials frameworks, eco-design scorecards, supplier audits – can close a gap that is fundamentally driven by production volume. 

Salomon’s own answer, embedded in this report, is honest: not yet.