About this report

This is VAUDE’s fifth sustainability report based on the GRI guidelines — the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and meets the requirements of the G4 core option. It refers – as indicated in the title – to the 2017 calendar year (and VAUDE’s financial year).

This report primarily covers our activities in 2017, in particular, those regarding the collections that were available in stores in 2017 (Summer 2017 and Winter 2017/18) and the producers and suppliers with whom we worked in 2017. 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. The subsidiaries, the VAUDE Franchise GmbH, a sales office in Spain are listed as equity investments, but are not contained within the report. We also have a Vietnamese quality control office which is not included in the report.

The environmental indicators include the company headquarters with its own production, the factory outlet and the VAUDE Café in Obereisenbach. The sales office in the Netherlands is not included in the environmental indicators. The factory outlets in Metzingen and Wadgassen and various rented order spaces are also 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.

The data on social conditions in our production sites was collected by the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) in audits. Read more in the FWF Index.

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

The management board supports the external audit by providing the necessary budgets and participating in the on-site audits. 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 2017 report, we used the same internal 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. Because the GRI guidelines are applied internationally, we can now be compared with companies all over the world.

The Sustainability Report for the year 2016 is still available for comparison on the VAUDE website.