This year, sustainable ski and winter apparel brand Mont Gele Gear teamed up with renowned photographer Matt Holyoak to create a campaign highlighting the real costs behind their clothing.
And to do so, the Swiss brand has chosen an unconventional path.
Instead of investing in media to advertise their new product line, Mont Gele Gear decided to spend their marketing budget on promoting their Snow Report – a sustainability and transparency report that highlights detailed information on raw material origins, manufacturer wages, product carbon footprint, and even information on production costs and profit.
Using various platforms such as social media and their website to post facts and data from their report, Mont Gele Gear want to make all information relating to their products easily accessible and offer their customers the kind of radical transparency that is usually only reserved for investors and boardrooms.
“We believe all brands in our industry should make relevant information readily available and put it at the forefront of their communication. Most brands promise a lot, but when you go beyond the smoke – the real information is buried deep in an annual report, if at all. Generally, it’s usually not very gratifying, hence why it’s hard to find,” says Founder and CEO Thomas Bata.
“If big companies copy our way of working, this I will consider to be a huge success,” Bata adds. “I understand that businesses need to be profitable and need to grow. I’m not anti-capitalist, but I do believe that we’ve gone backwards over the past 40 years in terms of looking at businesses holistically as a win-win mechanism for communities, employees, and the environment.”
With this initiative, Mont Gele Gear is setting a new standard of transparency and challenging the industry to follow suit.
Check out Bata’s article “The Real Cost of Your Clothing” here.
