Fusion Associates talks to Brad Boren, Director of Innovation & Sustainability at Norrøna Sport about how they as a smaller business approach sustainability, and also about Covid-19, impact and outlook on the business.
Tell us a little about your background and as Director of Innovation & Sustainability at Norrona, what does your role involve?
I grew up in the apparel industry. I was sewing, spreading fabrics and working in the warehouse before I could drive. My education, which was spread over years and mixed with work went from a BA in Colorado to Textiles and Apparel Production at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York to an MBA at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. My work life started in production both as an engineer and factory manager and progressed towards my passion in product development in the Outdoor industry.
I’ve worked for Marmot, Helly-Hansen, Reebok and Norrøna in different product development management roles. At Norrøna I was Director of Research, Design & Development for around 10 years where we went through tremendous reorganization and growth. The wonderful thing about Norrøna is that there has always been a strong sample area, repair department and drive to make products of high quality and function. As the Director of RD&D I introduced organic cotton and recycled materials into our strategy and we joined Textile Exchange to further focus on preferred fiber usage.
Through the years I became increasingly aware and concerned of the damage our industry was doing. Being in Norway, we were lucky enough to have the ability to follow our passion and enjoy outdoor sports in beautiful natural surroundings. However, as part of the textile industry we had a negative impact on the very nature we thought we were trying to protect. This paradox drove me into my current role where I could work towards impact reduction not just in our company, but in the industry as a whole.
My role as Director of Innovation and Sustainability is to develop measurable long term strategies for Norrøna leading to a ten year Road map to help us with continuous, ambitious improvements towards being a more responsible company. It is moving from passively reducing our harm to actively working towards industry transformation. I am currently on the Higg Index Brand & Retail Module Advisory Committee, Chairing the Textile Exchange Bio-Synthetic Round Table and actively participating as a Fashion For Good partner as well as being involved in other activities from Bluesign to the Ethical Trade Initiative to the Swedish Textile Initiative for Climate Action.
My goal within Norrøna is to help achieve our mission of creating the world's greatest outdoor products and offer unique adventures through responsible business. Sustainability is one of our four building blocks in addition to quality, function and design. Part of our main goals is being a leader in environmental and social responsibility and to push our industry forward. This is a giant task for an SME, but we need to help prove that smaller companies have a vital role to play in the transformation of the textile industry. We must be highly effective in our approach towards improvement and we must make sure all actions we take are impactful.
Collaboration is the key towards improvement and we must make sure all companies, large or small, no matter where they find themselves on this journey see a responsibility and a path towards improvement.
How has Norrona been affected over the past few months as a business and for its employees during the Covid-19 crisis, and how is the outlook now?
Covid-19 had a dramatic effect on most of the outdoor industry and Norrøna was not an exception. Norway was one of the first countries to move towards action of people working from home. One of the greatest benefits about Norrøna is that it is a fourth generation family owned and run company. The first reaction from our CEO, Jørgen Jørgensen, was to reach out to the employees, to our factory and material suppliers and to our key retailers. The message was that we are in this together, how do we help each other? Norrøna did not cancel orders and worked closely to find the best solutions.
We are a strategic company and part of our goals is to keep a close watch on SKU’s and inventory. This helped through the Covid-19 crisis. Jørgen provided employees with weekly updates and we tried to keep things moving as normal as possible. With most employees working from home, we learned how to improve our web based meetings. However, as a company that develops around 90% of our products at HQ, weekly fitting and evaluation meetings are important to ensure integrity of every product. We also test all materials both in the lab and in the field so there was definitely some disruption to our processes. As things began to open up, those employees required to use machinery such as our product constructors and material developers and testers were the first to return. Our web based sales were fortunately up, and as many people came to terms with Summer vacations at home, our retail sales in Norway also returned through the late Spring and Summer. What was evident so far through this virus crisis was companies that controlled their inventory and have longer product life cycles have been less at risk.
Our employees have worked really hard to keep things going in a positive direction from our sales people who were constantly on the phone with their retail partners to see how we can help to our supply chain people trying to navigate how to get next seasons products to the warehouse on time and trying to ensure confidence with our supply chain partners in such an uncertain time. We don’t yet know how this virus situation will end, but we do know that it is not sustainable to create too much product in any part of this industry. The goal needs to be 100% of production is sold. Anything less is a waste of resources and additional damage to the planet.
Many larger companies now have entire teams dedicated to sustainability that work hand in glove with product creation through to supply chain to inform the decision making process. As a smaller business, how does Norrona approach sustainability? What is the size, structure and influence of sustainability as a function within the business?
We have concentrated on this idea that people should be responsible for their actions. It is still a work in progress, so you will have to ask in a couple of years for an update, but so far I see people really care and work hard towards achieving the company goals. The primary premise behind our sustainability strategy is to actually have a sustainability strategy. Around 2013 we set out to have a five year road map from 2015 to 2020. We decided to put the five year goals on our website with both goals and actual numbers for each year. This was to be as transparent as possible. These goals were also part of individual KPI’s and part of the yearly bonus plan. This meant that material researchers and designers were responsible for achieving recycled fiber or traceable wool, RDS down or organic cotton goals for the year.
Supply chain personnel were responsible for having less than 1% use of air freight and an increase of off-peak season production so planning needed to be a high focus. Our RD&D department and production people were responsible for less than a 1% claim rate. Responsibility sat directly on the person who had control. This meant instead of adding to the sustainability team, we added to the pattern making or sewing team instead. At that time I was Director of RD&D and travelled with our head of Supply Chain to meet every fabric supplier. We went through the five year road map actions required with every vendor and worked together to develop a yearly plan towards success.
One thing that became clear was when our vendor partners learned that their performance affected the bonus of the people they were working with within Norrøna, they cared. We also set up an annual supplier survey which required both our RD&D and supply chain and our material suppliers the opportunity to score ten specific points and define specific improvements for the next year. This scorecard was used as part of a vendor rating system to reward our best achievers. These actions were set up to focus on a single source of truth and to allow people to focus on their jobs with the corporate goals as an integral part of it.
So at Norrøna instead of having people looking after others to ensure they are following our sustainability policies, we made sure our sustainability policies were easy to understand and as easy to measure as possible.
What have been the main challenges of transitioning to a sustainable business model? What are the costs and the benefits, and has it been difficult to get everyone on board?
I don’t know any other way than a sustainable business model. High quality products made as durable as possible with the required features and do not overproduce. The biggest challenge, however, is maintaining or improving product integrity with preferred fibers. Mechanically recycled Polyester is weaker than virgin. It takes more lab testing, field testing and redeveloping than it ever did before.
The investment in each product is therefore higher than it would be for virgin fibers. If a company just replaces a virgin material with recycled without testing, they may end up making a less sustainable product as it can breakdown faster or create quality issues that shortens the life cycle of the product increasing its environmental footprint. Making sure you know and do not assume all the details is critical to long term success. There has been a premium placed on recycled and organically grown fibers. This will increase the cost price of products, but at some point we need to re-examine our industry.
How cheap should a product actually be for us to be responsible? Most natural fiber products don’t pay for the water used. When we think about how many people were involved in every piece of clothing produced, how much energy, water, and chemicals were used, some of the cheap prices just do not add up. A responsible business model must pay fair wages and maintain the environment in the production countries. I find it is easy to get people onboard. Fifteen years ago when I started clinicing our sales team on organic cotton and higher priced tee shirts, I got some smiles. When I went into the details of the damage caused by traditional cotton, they understood, but were skeptical the retailers would pay a higher price. When I first shared our five year road map with our fabric producers in 2014, most did not believe we were serious. But after a year and our first supplier survey meeting, they saw we needed to act together to succeed.
I am really proud of our material suppliers and how they committed to action. We were not the biggest brand, but I believe they felt through us, they could also improve. Seeing opportunities in doing the right thing is what can drive us forward. Programs like the Higg Index and Textile Exchange’s Corporate Fiber & Material Benchmark (CFMB) create a transparent platform to help companies and consumers understand where they are on the journey towards greater responsibility. However this is a process, and my input has been that these programs need to be fair towards all size businesses and they need to help every business transition towards improvement.
Sustainability considerations are wide ranging, covering both environmental (carbon and water footprint, plastics, waste reduction, biodiversity) and social factors (human rights, working conditions, living wage). What are your main areas of focus?
This question is like asking me if I’d rather have fair trade dark chocolate or sustainably and ethically grown fresh strawberries on my ice cream. My answer would of course be, yes please. We need to treat humans with respect and dignity as do we also our planet. The focus with our Tier 1 factories has been concentrating mostly on social & labor requirements while our Tier 2 material suppliers have been focused on sustainability. We have recently been focusing additionally on sustainability at our tier 1 factories and social and labor on Tier 2.
We are members of Fashion for Good, Bluesign, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Textile Exchange, Swedish Textile Initiative for Climate Action and Ethical Trade Initiative among others. As a SME, we use collaborations as much as possible. It is our belief that through strong communications and agreements within the different brands, we make it easier for the supply chain partners. This is why as a company we put so much energy into reaching out and working with groups that we believe will make a difference. We also find that being involved with the industry indexes, we are able to concentrate on improvements and at the same time point out areas of unfairness when it comes to smaller companies.
Norrøna tries to do as much up front homework by picking the right supply chain partners as possible to reduce some of the work each season. It is critical to be effective and to make every action count towards measurable improvement concerning both social and sustainable issues. Tools such as the MSI are invaluable for smaller brands to make good decisions based on science. We would not be able to afford to do all the LCA’s on all our materials. Organizations like the United Nations also provide impactful frameworks for us to build our social and labor platform from. Our goal is to be a responsible company combining security for people, animals and our planet. Nothing else can suffice.
Do you have defined sustainability targets? If so how do you measure them and what KPIs do you have in place?
Defining targets is critical to any meaningful program so yes we do. We are now working off a 2029 corporate roadmap which defines measurable targets into 2 groups. 2020 to 2025 and 2025 to 2029. The reason we used 2029 instead of 2030 is 2029 will be Norrøna’s 100th birthday. Each roadmap target is broken down into specific KPI’s per year. In order for a target to be meaningful, it requires breaking it down into annual, measurable actions necessary to reach the long term goal. Through creating long-term goals with short and mid-term targets we are able to achieve real change and have time to create innovations with our partners in order to achieve those goals. Writing down and communicating targets with our employers, partners and community at large is the best way to bring together great minds to meet the many challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
My belief is that by consistently reevaluating how we do things to achieve these goals, we can eventually replace fifty year old technologies with new, cleaner, better ways to create material feedstocks, processing and producing products. Norrøna does not compromise on quality, function, design nor sustainability or give up one to achieve the other. They must work hand in hand for a product or company to be a success.
When did Norrona officially incorporate ‘Sustainability’ as a function and what changes, advances and innovations have been made in this regard since then?
Norrøna was started because Jørgen Jørgensen, the great grandfather to our current owner was not satisfied with the quality of the products he and his partner were producing. Instead of compromising, he started a new company. In my mind, whether he realized it or not, he set the company’s DNA deeply into sustainability over 90 years ago. Over the past fifteen years we have concentrated on using more preferred fibers into our products. This has required the commitment to test products long-term to make sure the products are also sustainable and our customers will be satisfied that they are fit for use. I would say it has taken the last 15 to twenty years to catch up by replacing dirty fibers with cleaner fibers without creating much compromise on product integrity.
We are now on the cusp of an exciting time where chemical recycling, using CO2 and methane as new fiber feedstocks and learning to use better growing techniques such as regenerative organic farming will allow us to create new fibers with better attributes that will also be better for the planet, the people and the animals. I absolutely feel the best is yet to come, but as an industry we need to do away with exclusivities that slow down the progress of a more sustainable existence. There are still too many well intended companies that tie down technologies so they can be first to market. I strongly believe in collaboration to bring beneficial technologies to market as soon as we can prove they work, and are beneficial. It is more powerful to let different companies interpret the technologies in their own way and create their magic to provide customers with unique options. This will benefit both the innovators and customers and accelerate positive innovation to market.
Are you hopeful that we will be able to reverse the trend on global warming?
We have the tools, but we need to have the desire. Through Covid-19 we reduced travel enormously, but definitely added to our plastic pollution. But through this difficult time, I have found where travel can be cut, and where there were missed opportunities for greater improvement due to the travel restrictions. But the question of is this travel more beneficial or less is a great litmus test. I believe there are ways to create fiber that can drastically reduce GHG emissions. The ability to trap CO2 and methane from escaping into the atmosphere and instead trapping it and making fiber will potentially create carbon negative fiber.
Changing the way we dye colors or apply treatments will also have an effect. Manufacturing and selling closer to the source, more environmental methods of transporting, and elimination of chemicals creating GHG will all have an effect. But the biggest change is we are now asking the questions, and creating transparency with methods that actually measure our GHG emissions. We can measure our actions to see how effective they were and we can remove fossil fuel from the mix.
I am hopeful that governments will use taxation to even the playing field and then apply benefits for more beneficial technologies, companies will see that many cleaner sources of energy can actually be a cost benefit in the long run and consumers will eventually equate dirty energy and products with sickness and unacceptable risk to their lives. Though these past few years have tested us all, I am hopeful that in the end humanity will do the right thing, put the right people in power, and work together towards our common goal of surviving, and then living.
About Norrøna Sport
Norrona's mission is to create the greatest outdoor products. Surrounded by the Arctic and Norwegian wilderness, the need to explore and a passion for the outdoors has always been in their DNA. They take pride in understanding and mastering the most demanding conditions nature has to offer. With relentless dedication to quality, function, design, and sustainability, they have crafted products for uncompromising adventurers through four generations since 1929. Welcome to nature.
About Fusion Associates
Since 1998, Fusion Associates has been placing experienced professionals across the globe within consumer markets including consumer goods, fashion, sporting goods, healthy living and luxury.
Environmental, humanitarian, social and political concerns are close to the Partners both in and out of the business. We pride ourselves in partnering with industry leaders who wish to contribute to a better, more sustainable future. Working with global companies that are at the forefront of innovating and integrating sustainability into the heart of their business, we have helped build purpose-led teams from leadership to subject experts in biodiversity and animal welfare.