A reflection on the outdoor industry in 2025

Jonn Langan
Apr 19
7 min read

At the time of writing, it is the Easter weekend of 2025. Normally a time of celebration with family and friends, but this year I feel quite different. Both for my personal situation but more importantly for the state of the world and the outdoor industry.

Walking up El Tiede in Tenerife — Hiking up El Tiede in Tenerife

We've come so far but have we lost our way?

I entered the apparel industry back in 1998 as an optimistic, energised 22 year old designer, excited by the chance to make a difference and help build the collections that enabled people to explore the world to their heart's content.

25+ years later that world has changed enough that I question the reasons why we build and develop products in the way we do. From the spiralling cost of materials, manufacturing (and now tariffs), to the newer generation's changing attitude to purchasing clothing and the move towards transparency and sustainability. Are we arrogantly moving in the wrong direction, scared to make big changes or decisions?

The traditional outdoor business is built on the same foundations all companies have been built on since the industrial & technological revolutions of the last century. Sustained growth and increasing profits. But with the all these changes happening in the last quarter of a century, how can companies continue to expect such high expectations?

The answer as you might expect is not clear or easy. I'm not going to be able to answer this in this article, as every company will need to formulate and navigate their own way forward. But the important point is to ask the questions and not be afraid of the answers.

Looking back to step forward

So this weekend I have been sitting at home reflecting on what those questions are and this brought me back to a book I backed on Kickstarter at the start of 2024: Mountain Style: British Outdoor Clothing 1953-2000

This book is truely one of the gems to have come out in the last few years. It chronicles the inception and development of the outdoor industry (through the eyes of the UK outdoor scene) up until the turn of the century.

As I flicked through the pages, I was reminded by what I loved about the industry and why it meant so much to me when I joined back in 1998. The balance of the human desire to better ourselves, along side constant technological evolutions were so inspirational.

Furthermore, it is the way the industry used the lens of consumer needs to build a community and products, is something I think we can look back to for inspiration on how to successfully move forward in these tough times.

Yes, the world is a different place and the consumer has evolved, but the core desire remains the same, get outside and enjoy our beautiful planet all whilst staying comfortable.

So in this section I will document just a few instances of how the outdoor industry changed and evolved over the last 75 years. Hopefully to help give some insights into the decision making and reasoning behind why we design and build outdoor apparel.

50's: The start of the outdoor explosion

Throughout the second world war (WWII) there had been various material developments that had allowed better, lighter and more functional clothing to be produced. Post WWII the inevitable surplus of military grade clothing allowed for the public to have appropriate clothing to explore comfortable the outdoor in their back yards.

Materials like the densely woven Ventile cotton, which allowed water vapour out, but protected from wind and showers and Bri-Nylon, a synthetic nylon yarn licensed from the American chemical giant Du-Pont, gave way to a new type of garment being worn on the hills.

In 1953 and then again in 1955, various assaults on Everest led to a new type of cold weather clothing suitable for mountaineering to grow in popularity, the duvet jacket. Built to be light, warm and packable and using eider-down these jackets allowed climbers and mountaineers to ascend further and faster than they had ever before.

60's: Outdoor for the masses

The 60's have a lot to answer for and a vibrant cultural revolution and deep social change in attitude, were at the forefront of this decade. This new, younger generation's desire to create their own identity led to the commercialisation of the outdoor clothing that had been seen as "specialist clothing" up to now.

Multiple retailers arrived on the high street selling bright and bold variations of the this new outdoor "trend". The function remained and for the first time people were identifying with the idealogy of getting outside and exploring for fun.

The garments were originally sourced from "adventure outfitters" but as demand grew, the stock became hard to come by, so high street retailers started to make their own collections. This led to strong competition and therefore the desire to create identifiable brands and silhouettes that consumers would come back to time and time again.

70's: Innovation leads the way

The 70's ushered in a decade of innovation that changed the way a lot of the outdoor clothing functioned. Up until the 70's waterproof materials used a non-breathable PU coating on the back of a material to make the garment waterproof, but new material innovations lead to multiple different breathable coatings and membranes being commercially available.

These new lighter and higher performing materials, along with the expanding communities desire to go higher and faster, lead to a new "alpine style" trend being born. Built around packability and better durability, these garments were made to withstand the harshest elements, enabling a new performance energy to be injected into the mountaineering & climbing communities.

80's: A testing time

As the performance of the materials improved, the need to communicate how good these materials were, also improved. Brands would start to both actively field test and lab test their materials and garments, to prove their credibility to be able to communicate to the consumers their superiority.

Quality materials were becoming such an important part of the ingredients of a garment that they too became branded (and communicated) in their own right. Some examples include Pertex & Gore-Tex which are still important material brand names to this day.

Further-more, the interaction between these performance layers led to collections being built around their layering systems. The importance of staying dry inside and out was a highly communicable set of information to gain market share and enable sales.

90's: Bringing the Outdoor into the City

With materials now able to perform in any environment, the style of the outdoors started to move into the urban environmnent. Spearheaded by the music scene at the time, outdoor jackets flooded the streets, helping to sky rocket the outdoor industry up to the stratosphere. Suddenly the outdoors was big business and for everyone.

Whether you were on top of mountain or on the terraces of a football stadium an outdoor jacket was seen. The battle of brands was heating up. Tribes were born out of this time, where the brand you wore represented your allegiances and values.

The millennium to a pandemic to a financial crisis

Since the early 2000's and up until the pandemic these evolutions and innovations helped fuel the outdoor industries growth. So much so that collaborations outside of the industry became common place with non outdoor brands creating outdoor clothing lines, as everyone wanted a piece of the action.

As the amount of clothing made grew, so did the need to account for it both physically but also environmentally. Waste and pollution from the clothing industry became big news and the importance on reducing our impact on the planet was realigned within the outdoor industry as a priority. For too long performance was the only focus, now it was equally important to show values that favoured the world we love to explore.

As the Pandemic hit in 2020 the world stopped for a moment. . . . and when it started again, the consumers had changed direction. People were more careful with how they spent their money and time, so they naturally consumed less and valued higher quality.

The pressure this brings is two fold. On one side it pushes brands to build products more carefully and to consider every factor in the creation of an product. On the other side, the business of the outdoor industry continues to demand growth and profits. This is where the world now seems to be misaligned.

So where do we go from here?

Choosing what we focus on next is fraught with uncertainty, but knowing that we can learn from previous situations means we can be confident in understanding the potential outcomes and therefore make good decisions.

Some things are certain. The world moves in cycles. Trends come back around, financial stability fluctuates and the human spirit will always bounce back.

You can make you own conclusions for the future, but my top 5 take aways from this time of reflection are:

Stay true to your community / consumer and be observant of how they are changing through the generations and communicate accordingly.
Use appropriate technology and materials to build products so the consumer can experience them for a lifetime.
Be agile & bold in your approach to elevate your vision and stand out from the crowd.
Be open to change (nothing is gained from arrogantly pushing forwards).
Be humble to the planet, its resources and the people that inhabit it by only making what is needed.

I hope this article both inspires you to think about your approach to the future of outdoor industry and also pushes you to learn more about its history.

Finally, as I mentioned at the start of this article, I whole-heartedly recommend buying a copy of the fantastic book: Mountain Style: British Outdoor Clothing 1953-2000.