Well, Kresse’s involved in the launch of a new climate change charity, and Yew are almost certainly going to be a part of that (not surprisingly), but Jun’s being playing around with other ideas from the start. Should we give a proportion of profits (it’s a good way to ensure we don’t give money away unless we can afford it) or a proportion of sales (tougher commitment)?  Well, we figured the way to do it would be to bite the bullet and just say we WILL commit to supporting certain charities. As such, we’ve recently submitted an application to join 1% For The Planet - http://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org. Through this we can support environmental charities – we HAVE to support them. 1% of our sales each year will go towards this. After that, if we want to continue to support top flight (non-environmental) causes through Kiva or like CWS Nepal (see People Yew like), then that’ll be separate.  Hopefully this is a good thing, we’re saying we’re committed to being a responsible company and we’ll sign a contract to bind us into that commitment.

I’d not seen the FMX before, and to be fair, I wasn’t so impressed with the stinky diesel coming out of their bikes, but I was blown away by some of the stuff these guys did. You’ve got to reckon that bike they’re spinning around weighs a fair bit – I saw one guy launch off the ramp and push his back wheel round so it was facing the way he was going, before yanking the whole thing back and landing – another guy took off and fully let go of his bike, flying like superman, before grabbing it back and safely nailing the landing.

I found this website with some freeze-frame pictures of some of the performances at the event: Panorama Journal. Pretty cool.

We were over at Freestyle promoting our brand at the stand of our friends, Disaster Industries.  These guys make beautiful custom snowboards and skateboards from wood. They’re works of art. The Disaster guys make boards for grown ups (a custom board is like a bespoke suit – expensive), so compared to many of the other stands at the event, they seemed a little mismatched to the majority of the visitors – who were teens, sporting what on of the Disaster boys was calling ‘no style’ fashion. You know, bright coloured hoodies and trousers big enough to fit a family in.

All the kids wanted free stickers, free flyers, free whatever – as long as it was free. By the time they hit the next stand, half of what they’d picked up was on the floor. It was crazy, after a couple of hours the floor would be covered with waste paper. People weren’t dropping rubbish like food or stuff like that – nope, just flyers, stickers and anything that they’d picked up for free and discarded. It was, I have to say shocking. One of our Swiss hosts said – “it’s not very swiss, eh?” Not quite, no.

Having said that, there were some positive differences from other similar sized day festivals I’d been to (think those big all day concerts in Hyde Park).  For one thing, the fast food on sale was remarkably good.  And the toilets were clean. I was also impressed with a bottle collection scheme they were running. Whenever you bought a drink, it was expensive – about £3 for a soft drink – but you were given a little plastic token and when you returned the empty bottle you got about £1.20 back (making the drink a more reasonable price). I did laugh to myself that it was a good idea as I picked my way through the mountains of waste paper.

Freestyle’s an awesome event, but I’m glad they’re thinking about sustainability for next year. I met the consultant tasked with bringing it to the show next year. She’s got a big task ahead of her when you consider that two of the event’s main draws are a massive snow ramp built in the warmth of late summer, and a bunch of crazy FMX daredevils burning fuel to do backflips.  But hopefully she can sort out something with all that paper for starters.

Anyway, please please please go and check out the competition. The first prize is tickets to the Metro Ski & Snowboard Show at London Olympia on 21-25 October. It’s a huge show and a great way to kick off the winter season. We’re having a stand right next to the 50ft kicker. With some luck, people might pay attention to what we’re doing and not some boarder doing an aerial 360. We’ll also give the winner a Winter Health Pack from our friends at Trust William. We’re working with them to produce a special pack for getting us athletes (or would-be ones…) through the cold season.  We’re also offering a second prize of an organic cotton t-shirt.

Enter the competition here: http://www.yewclothing.com/skishow

Seems like this didn’t happen. Nau had a target of $11m for 2007, but it looks like sales to date were more likely to have been around $4.5m (based on the fact that they said that they donated $225,000 to charity under a scheme that was supposed to be 5% of sales). Nau was always ambitious, but it’s still sad to see a company making good clothes shut it’s doors.