The outdoor industry is growing fast, and its customers are changing just as fast. They're not just buying gear anymore. They're checking who made it, how it got to them, and what it cost the planet along the way.
Datmos and OneStock, new whitepaper, Sustainable Orchestration in the Outdoor Sector, unpacks why this shift is happening and what outdoor retailers need to do about it. Here's a preview of what's inside.
And 57% are willing to pay premium prices for sustainable gear and apparel. According to the Deloitte and Outdoor by ISPO Survey.
Outdoor consumers have gotten sophisticated. That level of engagement comes with a catch: skepticism. Consumers are pushing back on greenwashing and expect brands to show proof, not just tell a story.
Most retailers want to do the right thing. The problem is structural, not intentional. Marketing can craft a compelling sustainability narrative, but without a single, unified view of inventory, fulfillment, and customer data, that narrative has nothing to stand on.
The whitepaper calls this the "operational capacity gap." It's the space between what a brand says and what it can actually prove.
The operational capacity gap shows up in three places:
None of these show up in a sustainability report. All of them show up in a brand's environmental footprint.
Providing the transparent evidence outdoor consumers demand is largely a data processing problem. AI parses and verifies large, fragmented supply chain datasets that would be impossible to manage manually, turning a brand's data gaps into something it can actually stand behind.
Traditional demand models are static. AI-driven forecasting factors in climate patterns, local trend shifts, and real-time social sentiment to predict stock requirements with far more precision, so gear gets made in line with actual demand instead of guesswork.
Ship-from-store models route orders through the closest fulfillment point instead of a distant distribution center, cutting both emissions and shipping costs.
Consolidating shipments and encouraging Click & Collect (BOPIS) does the same thing from the customer's side, reducing last-mile impact while also driving store footfall.
Patagonia's "Place" strategy treats distribution as a sustainability lever, not just a cost center, offering customers a slower shipping option at checkout to lower each shipment's carbon footprint.
evo takes the same principle to the storefront itself: every evo-branded product purchase automatically directs 2% of sales revenue to philanthropic partners and youth outdoor programs, built into the primary purchase decision rather than bolted on as a post-purchase donation prompt. Both examples point to the same model the whitepaper makes the case for: sustainability embedded into the operation itself, not layered on top of it.
Even a perfectly optimized warehouse doesn't fix what the whitepaper calls the "Intention-Action Gap": consumers who want to buy sustainably but default to the fastest, easiest option because that's what the storefront makes easiest.
Closing that gap means redesigning the digital experience itself, surfacing footprint data at the moment of decision and rewarding lower-impact choices like consolidated delivery.
The pressure is only building. A report by Garrison Everest projects that by 2026, over 70% of outdoor consumers will prioritize purchasing from companies with credible environmental commitments.
Brands that can't back up their claims with operational proof won't just lose a sale. They risk losing trust with a customer base that talks to each other constantly and holds long memories.
This is the gap our whitepaper is built to address: how outdoor brands move from sustainability as a claim to sustainability as an operating discipline, without sacrificing the speed and convenience customers expect.
It covers the consumer shift driving this pressure, the hidden operational costs of inefficiency, and concrete ways brands like Patagonia and evo are already closing the gap.
With AI and over 20 years of experience, Datmos helps businesses become more efficient and grow faster by leveraging their data. AI isn't something we added on. It's how we've always approached the work, and we now have the tools to deliver on that promise at scale.
Read the full whitepaper, Sustainable Orchestration in the Outdoor Sector, for the complete picture.
