Joleen Ong, senior director of brand and retailer membership at Cascale, recently joined a panel of industry experts at the Outdoor Retailer Industry Day in Utah to discuss external factors impacting the future of the outdoor industry. The “Under Pressure: Understanding the Continuing Forces Redefining Outdoor Business” panel explored how brands are responding to tariffs, supply chain disruptions, sustainability demands, evolving consumer values, and boycotts of American products, offering actionable insights on building resilience and driving impact in a rapidly changing landscape.
Moderated by Suzanne Stroeer, owner of Dreamland Safari Tours and founder of AWExpeditions, the discussion also included Laura Schaffer, vice president of integrated marketing, brand amplification and impact at Orvis, and Jenni Staudacher, vice president of supply chain at Salomon.
Ong highlighted the impact of tariffs on supply chain decisions on brands, not only on costs but also on sourcing and planning. She noted how abrupt factory exits in response to trade shifts could result in unpaid wages, an increase in contract labor, and weakened supplier trust, which could subsequently dull the market signal needed for suppliers to make CAPEX investments for decarbonization.
On the importance of embedding responsible purchasing into governance, Ong shared how leading brands build cross-functional alignment — between sustainability, sourcing, and finance — in order to make decisions that reflect long-term priorities, not just a short-term response to tariffs, thereby shifting from transactional to strategic sourcing.
She emphasized the need to consider key trade-offs between local and global sourcing, urging sourcing professionals to consider localizing the sourcing of trims, raw materials, and components, which, in some cases, need to be imported to ensure supply and demand are met.
Delving deeper into resourcing and deprioritization of sustainability initiatives, Ong noted that brands are doubling down on efforts despite tight budgets, reframing sustainability as a business continuity issue in alignment with growing regulatory requirements. She highlighted how brands with long-term supplier relationships are more resilient when capacity is limited.
Ong also pointed out how brands are increasingly integrating sustainability KPIs into sourcing scorecards, rethinking what they measure and refining their metrics to reward trust, on-time delivery, emissions progress, and social performance, instead of prioritizing cost as a top scorecard metric, which can unintentionally penalize sustainability.
Ong shared insights on how competitors within the same market can collaborate to drive systemic change in sustainability. Reflecting Cascale’s mandate to foster pre-competitive collaboration, she emphasized that most environmental and social challenges, like factory emissions or excessive overtime, cannot be solved by any single brand in isolation. Ong underscored the importance of competitors aligning on shared expectations, data systems, and improvement frameworks to level the playing field, sending clearer, more consistent signals to suppliers across the value chain.
Reflecting on the recent Cascale Forum, which took place in Ho Chi Minh City, Ong shared insights from the event, where 42 percent of attendees said aligned brand requirements are key to accelerating decarbonization. She emphasized the importance of brands collaborating —on shared KPIs, improvement programs, or supplier scorecards — to reduce duplication and give factories confidence that sustainability progress will be rewarded, not penalized.
Ong shared how Cascale is encouraging brands to integrate climate and labor data more deeply into sourcing decisions — not just for reporting, but for actual business decisions, which is essential to driving a shift from ambition to accountability. She concluded by urging the outdoor industry to treat sustainability as a strategic infrastructure, not a side initiative, to build a future-proof industry.