About this report

This is VAUDE’s fourth sustainability report based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 Guidelines. It refers - as indicated in the title - to the 2016 calendar year (and VAUDE’s financial year) and meets the requirements of the G4 core option.

This report primarily covers our activities in 2016, in particular, those regarding the collections that were available in stores in 2016 (Summer 2016 and Winter 2016/17) and the producers and suppliers with whom we worked in 2016. Where possible, we give an outlook on the future and on upcoming collections.

No other companies are included in the VAUDE Sport GmbH & Co. KG financial statement. 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 Obereisenbach is verified by an independent environmental auditor in accordance with EMAS and ISO 14001. More at EMAS-Index. myclimate calculates the emissions that we produce. This information can be found in the GRI Index. 

Information about social conditions in our production facilities is 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 board 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 2016 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 2015 Sustainability Report is still available on the VAUDE website for comparison.