Entries tagged with ‘news’
Sales by outdoor retailers will grow 2.5% to €5.82 billion in Europe this year, according to estimates released Thursday at a press conference marking the opening of the OutDoor trade show in Friedrichshafen, Germany
In 2007, clothing captured the lion’s share of an estimated €5.68 billion in retail sales with €2.85 billion (+4.09%). Shoes came in second place with €1.25 billion (+3.66%) in sales, followed by equipment with €1.58 billion (+1.81%).
Read more on SportOneSource.com...
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: news, events
Laneo is gathering the world’s most inspired outdoor enthusiasts and a first-class network of corporations and mentors in one place, with one goal – putting sustainable projects for the planet into action. Designed for anyone who enjoys nature and wants to get involved, these hands-on eco-events will equip communities, organizations and like-minded companies to take action and spark real change. Participants work together to plan each event and spread the word through blogs, social networking, online tagging, photo sharing and more.
Visit http://camps.laneo.org/ for more details. Help us inspire a new generation of outdoor ambassadors!
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: partners, community, news, events, environment
We just came across a very noble feat. 3 runners crossed the Sahara Desert for 110 days, running close to 2 marathons a day, in a journey for charity that’s been captured on film for a documentary called “Running the Sahara”.
All of us working at Laneo love the way outdoor activity brings us all closer to nature, especially when it mobilizes “commercial forces” to help restore and protect it.
One of the adventure’s goals was to help establish clean water wells for desert villagers the runners met along the way. The project was run under the umbrella of the “H2O Africa Foundation”, a charity and two major sponsors; Magellan and National Geographic. Alongside, a documentary film under the same name “Running the Sahara”, was shot and directed by James Moll, and produced and narrated by Matt Damon (Co-Founder of the H20 Foundation) which provided some very needed additional coverage.
We dug around for some additional information on the results of this quest and found the usual tidbits; if you find anything really interesting, please ping us at Laneo and we’ll publish it!
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: films, society, news, environment
Degrading a protected site, polluting with waste, will soon be liable in the European Union to criminal sanctions, under a law passed by parliament yesterday.
“After eight years of negotiation, the European Parliament has reached an agreement with member states on legislation that will force national governments to apply criminal sanctions to those causing deliberate or negligent damage to the environment.”
With all the great initiatives currently happening on and offline (Laneo included) to promote a collective, citizen based, sense of urgency, a law like this could almost close the circle on improving the “management of our planet”; all that’s left is applying all these good resolutions…
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: society, news, environment
Wired Magazine’s June issue “Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green”, will certainly raise a few eyebrows when it comes out next month.
This highly admired magazine has always taken the “out of the box” angle on a tremendous variety of subjects but this time, it’s journalists are tackling one of humanities current hot topics; the Planet.
Their point is that we should embrace change and actually “slaughter some of environmentalism’s sacred cows” such as a) accept genetic engineering, b) embrace nuclear power, c) A/C is ok and others in order to win the war on global warming.
We’re impatiently awaiting the issue to hit our news stands in Paris but whatever we read, we’ll continue to take our bikes to work, each local grown food and prefer sustainable products.
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: websites, society, documentation, news, environment
Our friends at JIWOK (they’ve enrolled over 120 members) have just launched a cool new MP3 Training Program to help everyone achieve their goals while having fun. The originality is that this service is delivered via the web onto any MP3 device and includes not only great music (under a Creative Commons license) but real scientific based coaching that is synced to the tracks. Anyone who has ever done any running knows what it’s like constantly gazing at your wristwatch computer looking for indications on whatever parameter you programmed if for, while trying to maintain a specific rhythm! Result – you almost get seasick while doing it. What’s neat about this is now it’s the music that tells you when to make your effort or to cool down and even better, you can choose from a wide range of training programs and different types of music, so you have an endless variety of material to get you out the door! And if that wasn’t enough, it’s free and you can join the community and share whatever crosses your mind with other athletes around the world!
Take a minute and check them out, they’re really great guy’s at JIWOK and just like us – they want to “save our playground”!
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: music, sports, community, news
A friend of mine sent me a link today to NOE, which is a new participative website to collect ideas for the “Grenelle of the Environment” here in France.
We were really proud to see that Laneo has been cited as being one of the “Top Initiatives” in this collective effort.
Alain Juppe, former Minister of Ecology and Sustainable Development announced the “Grenelle” earlier this year to serve as a broad consultation on environmental issues. Six workgroups are currently underway and any French citizen can contribute to the debate, results are expected this fall. The name “Grenelle” is an expression that refers to the famous “Grenelle Agreements of of May 1968”, a multi-party debate that brought together representatives from the government, trade associations and other ONG’s on the subject legislating and giving an opinion.
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: society, news, environment
As Laneo grows, there are hurdles that we’ve overcome that I am tremendously proud of. There was the 1st member on January 10th when our website first opened to the public. There was our 1st Partner (Salomon) who joined back in 2006, and now– the 1st tangible initiative that a Partner has taken.
I’m proud to announce that LOOK CYCLES has launched a co-branded road bicycle pedal that will contribute around 5€ to Laneo for each pedal sold. This is bold move and an innovative leap forward in their industry that I must put into perspective. Nothing is more industrially complex than building premium carbon bike frames, not mention the ecological offset. LOOK CYCLES has painstakingly built a world-renowned reputation over the course of the last 25 years and decided it was time to do something to help save the planet. They chose Laneo to partner with. Sure, you might say it was an easy call but when you’ve got your hard earned reputation at stake, a product that is not easily made environmentally friendly, and your customer base isn’t begging for it – this move is outright courageous. And I wanted to make sure I acknowledge them publicly.
When you have a chance, send them your words of thanks. Remember – Laneo currently has 25 Partners in different sports categories and around 50 others that are in final stages of negotiation. That’s quite a representative number of corporations from the sports industry. I have worked with these companies for over 18 months and have exchanged literally hundreds of emails and phone calls over the same period. In spite of all these factors, only 1 company has come forward.
LOOK CYCLES. They’re not following, they’re leading and I hope many others will soon be inspired.
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: sports, partners, news
I’ve got quite a growing collection of partially recycled outdoor wear, basically shirts and polar sweaters, and I keep asking myself is it really as efficient as I think it is. The Economist wrote an interesting article recently about the “Truth of Recycling” (The Economist Quarterly, June 9th 2007) that I suggest you get you’re hands on and it provided a number of conclusions that answered a few of my questions notably; the future of recycling.
When I talk with manufacturers about this issue they are quick to point out that although it is technically feasible for certain products, it is costly and they are uncertain about its impact on sales, thus reluctant to make the investment. When I created Laneo, I imagined one day being able to help manufacturers in developing new products, collaboratively designed by Laneo’s member community. The Economist article underlines this by pointing out the need to design products with recycling in mind – meaning “closed-loop” manufacturing cycles, that obliges people to look at the entire life-cycle of a product. This conclusion clearly defends the positive impact that such a strategy would have on energy consumption, raw materials and pollution.
Recycling, in order to be really efficient, needs to be taken into account at the design stage. I believe a real revolution is coming. Prices of renewable products will drop dramatically and the end customer will really benefit from the “green” advantage.
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: news, environment
Many people, especially in the financial industry, ask the same question- who’s behind Laneo. Well, for one – me. I’ve poured my entire savings and roughly 15 hours a day for 2 years into this project. Next there are a quite a few people, around the world, that overtime got addicted to my optimism and drive and have given a pretty big chunk of their free-time to Laneo, all on top of their jobs, family and leisure time. Next come the operational people. The experts that you can’t do anything without – lawyers, accountants, bankers and experts in other technical areas, all of which have “donated” a majority of their time to this project. Then come some specialized people, like the creative firm behind our website and identity, that built my dream and took it beyond what I imagined in the first place and believe me, they’ve really invested in our future. And there are the neighbors, the guys at the local café, the buddies who run sports stores, my training pals, the health food store team and restaurant where I spent hours building this project on a lap top and no sleep. Then there are the “Premier Partners”, the first manufacturers that believed in Laneo before it even existed. They “lent” us the leverage of their brands to help get us on the way. There is the Board of Directors and Advisory Board, all of whom hold tremendous responsibilities at their day jobs, yet found the time to support me. And finally, my family, spread across the globe and sending me extremely kind words of support and encourage even though some admit – they don’t fully understand what I’m doing. And most importantly, my wife and son, who have somehow learned how to fix dripping taps, change car wheels and keep our home running while I travel the world in my quest to restore the planet to it beauty. I’m planning to put a tribute page up on the website sometime soon, so I won’t list their names here, but in total over 200 have helped Laneo get to where it is. And while most people want “headcount figures”, and number of employees, Laneo’s success is measured in the tangible proof that the outdoors are getting cleaner. So, until Laneo starts delivering, we’re not hiring – but we’re still going to be working really hard, with the 200 or so “invisible” people devoted to the cause and our growing member community.
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: community, news
I really can’t pinpoint it, because I have experienced it too often, but I know how I felt at the time. It was during the swim leg of an Ironman a few year’s back. While you should be concentrating on your breathing and finding your rhythm, I reached forward mechanically to find some still water to “pull” on and my hand came back with a bag of garbage. For people who participate in open water sports, this is not an unusual encounter but at that precise moment, it changed the rest of my life. Here I was, half way around the globe from home, having invested an important sum of hard earned savings and who knows how many hours of training and other sacrifices to…, swim around in garbage. I won’t dwell on the variety of other things that crept up my nose and hung off my swim goggles and those of my fellow competitors during that part of the race that day, but believe me; it wasn’t pretty. For the rest of my 11 hours of racing that day, I asked myself endless questions. Who’s fault was it? Why did it happen? Was I the only one that cared? And more importantly, what could I do about it? In retrospect, as many endurance athletes know, the fact that I had such a “difficult” equation to answer, actually helped my race result in the end.
I kept this idea alive during the months following that trip and it matured slowly and surely into a serious Project. Oddly enough, one day while traveling down to Biarritz (French Basque Region) with my wife, I started scribbling madly on my notepad. During the 5 hour train trip, I basically sketched out the complete project. As my wife drove us to our friend’s house that evening, I passionately laid out the vision, mission, strategy and all the other operational details to my bewildered chauffeur. From that day on, I knew what I was going to do with my life.
The final piece of the puzzle came a bit later, mid-summer 2005. My wife announced that she was pregnant with our first baby and in those following magical moments when time just seems to stop; I realized for “who” I was going to work for – my son (as I discovered later on) and his soon to be friends. Probably one of the most asked questions I get today is, why? After I explain the above the next statement comes automatically; “cool idea, it should earn you a lot of money right ?!”. When I continue to explain that they’ve misunderstood, I get an all too serious; “sure, but if it goes under, you’ve lost everything.” This is where I systematically make this final point.
Laneo will NEVER be a failure, because it just can’t. Even if Laneo donates only 100€, to only one clean-up action, somewhere in the world – then it has been a success. That’s the only thing that keeps me and the other people at Laneo moving forward everyday – one step at a time. We’re in this for the long haul. We’re not in it for any fame or glory – just the end goal of a clean & beautiful place to play in. I will never let us lose that focus. After all, we cannot let the planet get so dirty that our children cannot go out and play in it, and wonder why we didn’t do anything about it when it was happening. So if you haven’t joined Laneo yet, now’s the time – come on, give us a hand!
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: news
I’ve got a lot of people around me that said we should have started a Blog a long time ago. Though they might have been right, at the time, we figured that everyone is pretty busy and another “diary” on Start-Up woes was not going to add anything really tangible to help save the Planet. We thought that we were better off just trying to get Laneo up and running and securing partnerships that were going to fuel our action.
So here we are; close to 2 years after starting to work on the concept, 1 year after launching the company and 6 months after enrolling our first member – we now think it’s time to start telling a bit of the story. But more importantly, we believe that purpose of this Blog is to create awareness of a growing dilemma around the globe; we’re not going to continue enjoying our outdoor sports and games if we don’t start doing something about preserving the very beauty of it. We hope that as this Blog grows, we will have the opportunity to not only share with you our vision about how we should take control of our future, but also, with the help of our members and readers, start creating a community that will forever change how outdoor enthusiasts around the world, treat their environment. Just as our members have engaged to do; we’re “Donating our Opinions” to help Save the Planet.
Posted by: andrew |
Tags: documentation, community, news
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