ISPO Munich 2024, Dec. 3–5
Three intensive days of speaks, innovations, products and sustainability. Here is SGI Europe’s wrap-up for the second day of this year’s ISPO Munich, with highlights from panel talks to product launches and new launches.
This article will evolve throughout the trade show.
Product news
LEKI x Hestra – Family businesses shake hands
As the second day of ISPO 2024 came to a close, Leki and Hestra were finally able to present their unique product collaboration. For the first time, Leki’s Trigger pole system has been sewn into cross-country and alpine ski gloves.
At the launch, Wednesday evening at Sportschuster’s historic shop in Munich’s old town, specially invited guests were invited to squeeze and feel the first three glove models. Leki CEO Matthias Hatt explained that the product took over two and a half years to produce. Leki had proposed it to Hestra at ISPO 2022.
“There was no glove manufacturer we could have chosen other than Hestra. They share the same passion for product and, like us, are a family business,” Hatt explained.
Hestra CEO Anton Magnusson said that although on the outside it doesn’t look that advanced, it really took a lot of time and testing to incorporate the small loop and get the gloves perfect. “The loop may look simple but it’s important that it not get in the way and chafe. Just like the band that runs around the wrist on the inside of the glove. It absolutely must not be so tight that it cuts off the blood supply,” he said.
Hestra’s CEO revealed that he’d participated in the testing of the cross-country glove. “I raced last year’s Vasalopp in them, in one of the first sharp tests,” he said.
The three Trigger models will be released today, Dec. 5, in a soft launch in ten stores worldwide, including Sportschuster, Alpint in Stockholm, Norwegian Snø and two US stores. Leki x Hestra will be available for all stores for the 2025/26 season.
Allied / Active Apparel Group – The future of clothing is already here
Down producer Allied, a supplier to many of the biggest sports manufacturers over the past 30 years (one of its first customers was The North Face), has in recent seasons started developing products of its own. The purpose, as Creator and Marketing Director Matthew Betcher puts it, is to “test what’s possible and try to make our products even more sustainable.”
One of the major innovations at ISPO 2024 is Allied’s Templa Biodegradable project. Together with textile manufacturer Active Apparel Group, Allied has developed a down jacket all of whose parts – outer fabric, lining, buttons, zippers, cuffs – are 100 percent biodegradable. Or 99.9 percent. A small part of the large zipper is made of metal. But it can of course be removed.
Templa Biodegradable will cost around €1,000 at retail. Question is, when will these products be available at prices the masses can afford? Such initiatives are great for the climate, but it’s only when consumers outside the luxury market start to buy that we’ll see real environmental benefits.
That is “years away,” the developers at Active Apparel Group tell us at SGI Europe. The technology is so specialized and expensive, so limited in capacity, that it will be impossible to produce affordable, 100 percent biodegradable products for a long time to come.
Black-line / Quicksett – A snowboarder’s best friend
When the French Outdoor Award 2025 was presented on Wednesday evening, the alpine innovation QuickSett from Black-Line stood out. This will make many snowboarders cry tears of joy. Many are the skiers who’ve struggled with sore thighs when the brackets of the drag lifts have worn out their legs.
The Quicksett consists of a swivel plate that attaches under the snowboarder’s binding. Before it’s time for the rider to take a tow of any kind, the front binding is turned 90 degrees so that the shoe’s toe points forward. Voilà! The tow bar is now behind the thigh, instead of on the inside. No more tiring out your snowboard legs by lunchtime pizza. This year’s snowboard Christmas present is here, et c’est très bon!
Talks
Mobility
Dr. Fiona Bull, head of the Physical Activity Unit at the World Health Organization (WHO), led a panel discussion on mobility with Emma P. (Mason) Zwiebler, CEO of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI); Elena Korf, Director of Engagements & Partnerships at Nike; Marina Moguš, Managing Director at Adidas Central Europe; and Grace McNamara, CEO of The Collective, a consultancy for companies in the health, physical activity, sport, longevity and fitness industries.
In Bull’s summation, “more of the same,” more living as we live now, “is not enough.” Human beings are growing ever more idle with their bodies and are thereby raising the cost of medical care. Moreover, women and girls are both the most idle of all and the least likely to respond to traditional inducements to exercise. (Inducements and incentives have been a common theme at ISPO – brought up, for instance, at the panel on running as preventive medicine.)
We will be filing a report on mobility. (Nota bene: This talk took place on day one.)
Innovation vs. environment
Patagonia’s Vice President of Product Impact & Innovation, Matt Dwyer, described the company’s early scrutiny of its own supply chain, along with the troubles of reporting some of the unpleasant surprises therein and the satisfactions of clearing some of them up.
The second half of this talk featured David Eklund, CEO of Icebug; David Stover, co-founder and CEO of Bureo; and Julie Gretton, charged with End-to-End Supply Chain Sustainability at Gore-Tex.
Gore had early progress to report on Scope 1 and 2 emissions, while Icebug described traceability to the fourth degree and Bureo recounted its transformation from the production of a sporting good (skateboard decks) to the supply of raw materials.
See our article on the talk: Patagonia, Gore, Icebug and Bureo talk innovation at ISPO.
A blurring of the lines
Things took an American turn with Ute Stauss, Managing Director for Germany and Global Licensing & Partnerships Expert at Licensing International Germany; Serkan Yel, Business Strategy Consultant & Advisor at Motorola and formerly at Red Bull; Patrick Kessel, Managing Director & co-founder of In-YS GmbH; and Markus Kuhn, a former defensive tackle for the NFL’s New York Giants.
According to Yel, we are witnessing a blurring of the lines between sport, entertainment and lifestyle. Tech has been instrumental in this. Armed with the internet, smartphones, social media and now AI, customers have begun creating “content” of their own – much of it derived from the very sporting events that businesses put on.
But things are changing in the traditional B2C direction as well. Augmented and virtual reality (AR, VR) and, once again, AI are enabling companies to “enhance” the fan experience.
Capacity for traceability
There’s still another shift taking place in tech. Volker Ditscher, Director of Global Track & Trace at Wipotec Group, was on hand to explain the virtues of extending product codes into a second dimension – in other words, of going from things like 1D barcodes to things like 2D QR codes. The reason is simple: the additional capacity for data.
As Ditscher explained, higher-capacity labels – in combination with databases – can make products traceable below the batch level, down to the individual item, and then from resource extraction to end use. And this relates, of course, to EU directive on sustainability due diligence – as discussed on day one by FESI’s Chiara Mingozzi. More to come.
ISPO Munich 2024, Day 1, Dec. 3
One-third of this year’s ISPO Munich is behind us. Here are some highlights, from panel talks to product launches and innovations.
This article will evolve throughout the trade show.
Breaking Barriers – Unlocking Consumer Growth Potential
At one of SGI Europe’s own panels, “Breaking Barriers – Unlocking Consumer Growth Potential,” Bastian Graber, Consumer Insights Expert at Toluna Group, drew conclusions from some 2.3 million data points gathered in the DACH region (see chart). In short, more and more consumers are taking an interest in physical and mental health – and social media channels like Reddit and WhatsApp can be a great way to reach them.
At the same panel Tony Kraftling, Deputy Brand Manager at Fjällrävn, and Franziska Freer, EMEA Marketing Manager at Merrell, discussed their strategies for consumer growth. Fjällrävn is establishing unconventional partnerships with bike brand Specialized and Stockholm fashion house Acne Studio, while Merrell, with its Urban Hike collection, is targeting customers who Head outside but do not belong to the core outdoor clientele.
Chiara Mingozzi, Sustainability Policy Officer at the Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI), was on hand for a talk and gave us an structured idea of the heavy burdens that the EU’s Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence is soon to lay on companies in the sporting goods and other industries. We will be filing a detailed story on her insights and recommendations.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a topic in a number of talks at this year’s ISPO Munich. One of the first on the schedule wondered whether AI is “just a driver of change or a real, innovative force?” We heard from Sebastián Lancestremère, WW Strategic Partnerships Director at Microsoft; Greg Nieuwenhuys, Senior Partner at Generative AI Strategy; Danay Lea, founder & CEO of FluidState; and Tobias Matern, Senior Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Their general message was twofold. On the one hand, AI will likely become an irreplaceable assistant in every line of work on the planet, and people are adopting it even faster than they adopted the internet. On the other hand, AI is scary, even for those most in the know. More to come.
OrthoLite appears to have found a way to provide the missing piece for the biodegradable shoe: the biodegradable insole. As our colleagues at The Outdoor Industry Compass (OIC) report, company subsidiary Cirql Zero has developed a proprietary supercritical foaming (SCF) that, it claims, can slot right into a shoemaker’s existing manufacturing and scale up.
As of March 2025 the European Outdoor Group (EOG) will have a new Director, Christian Schneidermeier, who was most recently CEO of the German alpine brand Ortovox.
Meanwhile, Houdini has lined up a new CEO. Knut Are Høgberg, former Group CEO of Odlo and COO of Helly Hansen, will be taking charge in February 2025. The Swedish sportswear brand is also adding two members to its board: Eric Bascle, former CEO of DB Journey and Black Crows, and David Ekelund, co-founder of Icebug.
Brand & product news
Db
Norwegian bag developer Db (formerly Douchebags) has committed to increasing the use of recycled materials in its products by 2025. Now it has launched the Weigh Lighter range of bags: a 28-liter daypack, a helmet bag, a 70-liter duffel bag and a Snow Roller ski case made from Aluuja, a 100 percent recycled polypropylene. Aluuja looks thin but is completely waterproof and extremely durable – actually stronger than steel. The products are sold in limited editions to selected retailers, and the ski case is made in only 30 pieces. Aluuja produces significantly lighter products; the duffel bag weighs 1.3 kg, less than the normal 2.0 kg, and the Snow roller comes in at 2.2 instead of 4.4 kg, shaving half the weight of the material Db has usually used.
Doubledeck
German snowboard brand Doubledeck – started a few years ago by Andreas Kramer, who has 30 years of experience in the snowboard industry – is launching in 2025 a new sales model, in addition to new color combos on its boards. Alpine shops will be able to rent boards directly from Doubledeck and then in turn rent them to customers. At the end of the season, the renters can then send the boards back to Doubledeck, which will refurbish the boards and then sell them to the end consumers. With this agreement, Doubledeck believes that rental companies can recoup the rental cost of each board after just two days of rental. This winter, Doubledeck will be available in France, Italy and Switzerland in addition to Germany.
Haglöfs
Haglöfs has more news. Together with alpinist Francois Montuori, the Swedish brand announced a completely redesigned L.I.M. collection at a press conference where Swedish fika and cinnamon buns worthy of the Nordic winter land were served. Haglöfs’ most technical and lightweight collection consists of three layers for high-intensity activities. For 2025, a new base layer has been developed in which Haglöfs has used Polartec’s new version of Power Dry, which has a softer, brushed surface against the skin. Haglöfs has added two pockets on the stomach, where, for example, water bottles can be carried.
ISPO Award / Mammut
There were many, many winners at Tuesday’s ISPO Award ceremony. Most of the awards went to the Swiss company Mammut. There were eight awards for Mammut when their upcoming winter collection was honored. Seven of these awards went to products from Mammut’s Eiger Extreme Nordwand collection, a series for which Mammut’s developers have spared no expense in materials that make it extra wind-, water- and wear resistant.
Find all the winners here: ISPO Award 2024.
