About this report

This is VAUDE’s third sustainability report based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 Guidelines. It refers - as indicated in the title - to the 2015 calendar year and meets the requirements of the G4 core option.

Since 2013, we have published a GRI report annually.

In the VAUDE Sport GmbH & Co. KG financial statement, no other company is included. Subsidiaries, the VAUDE Franchise GmbH, a sales office in Spain, and an office in Shanghai are listed as equity investments, but are not contained within the report. In addition, we have a quality control office in Vietnam which is not included in the report.

The company headquarters with our production facility, the factory outlet and the VAUDE café in Obereisenbach are all included in the environmental indicators, while the sales office in the Netherlands is not included. The factory outlets in Metzingen and Wadgassen and various rented order spaces are excluded from the environmental data.

One of our major suppliers is the legally independent company VAUDE Vietnam. VAUDE Vietnam is not included in the report. The production site is taken into account in the data on the supply chain.

We want to present the success of our sustainability, objectively and quantifiably. Verification of the data we present by independent third parties is therefore very important to us.

The environmental data based on our company headquarters in Tettnang-Obereisenbach is verified by an independent environmental auditor according to EMAS and ISO 14001. More at EMAS-Index. myclimate calculates the emissions that we produce. This information can be found in the GRI Index.

Specifications about social conditions in our production facilities are compiled by the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) in audits. More at FWF-Index.

Our financial statements are audited by the statutory requirements of the independent auditing company GmbH Schnetz, Buchmann, Michele Ravensburg.

The management supports the external audit of the report by providing the necessary budgets. Aside from the audit contract, there are no other relationships between the organization and the auditors.

KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft provided limited assurance on selected sustainability information for the first two report years, 2013 and 2014. For the 2015 report, we used the same guidelines and criteria. This year we did not carry out an external verification.

Transparency and comparability are important factors for sustainability. By applying the guidelines, our report is more comprehensive and transparent. Since the GRI guidelines are applied internationally, we can now be compared to companies around the world.

The Sustainability Report for the year 2014 is still available on the VAUDE website for comparison.

The entire VAUDE CSR-Team works on the creation of the GRI report. We have distributed the various aspects so that there is always one expert for each respective section of the report. We also receive support from Controlling and Organizational Development on specific aspects.