How 5 outdoor brands protected their European supply chain
With a recently departed ESG Lead and EU retailers asking tougher questions, Bradshaw Taylor reached out to the team at Litmus for support.
Introducing Bradshaw Taylor
Bradshaw Taylor is the group behind five specialist outdoor and lifestyle brands: Schöffel Ski, Schöffel Country, Artilect, KEEN Footwear UK, and Sherpa Adventure Gear.
From their headquarters in Oakham, Rutland, the business distributes across the UK, Europe, and North America, with warehouse and office operations in Grantham, Boulder (Colorado), and the Netherlands.
Their customer base is the European specialist outdoor retail market — independent retailers, department stores, and category buyers who increasingly need to know exactly what’s in their supply chain and what suppliers are doing to reduce their impacts.
The challenge
The sustainability foundations were there. Bradshaw Taylor’s leadership cared, the culture was right, and many of the behaviours B Lab and European customers ask for were already in place. The problem was evidence.
When their ESG lead departed, the business was left with a carbon footprint that was out of date, a set of well-intentioned policies that hadn’t been auditably documented, and no structured way to respond when European B2B customers started asking harder questions about supply chain transparency and sustainability credentials.
At the same time, B Lab was replacing its points-based B Impact Assessment with a requirements-based standard — one that came into force in March 2026.
Certification required demonstration of formal governance, evidence of active implementation, and a clear year-on-year trajectory. The data existed, but was spread across three seperate finance systems.Â
The leadership team needed a partner who could build a carbon and governance infrastructure they could actually execute — without rushing to hire a sustainability lead before the right structure existed to support one.
How Litmus helped
We started by building a complete picture of where they actually stood. That meant going back to the data fundamentals.
A full Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon baseline | The 2021 footprint was set aside and a new 2024 baseline was built from activity data across all UK, US and Dutch operations. With Scope 3 accounting for 99% of that figure — primarily purchased goods across five brands — the work confirmed that the real emissions story sits deep in the supply chain, not on the energy bills.
SBTi-aligned targets and a Carbon Reduction Strategy | From the baseline, we worked with the team to set credible near-term and long-term targets: a 42% absolute reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and net zero by 2050. Not pledges. Targets with a structured reduction plan sitting underneath them, broken into strategic priorities with internal owners.
B Corp Gap Analysis against the new v2.1 standards | Before the new requirements-based standard came into force, we ran a full gap analysis across all seven B Lab impact areas. The finding was consistent: the behaviours and values were there, the policies mostly existed, the evidence and governance structures to support them weren’t yet auditable. We mapped exactly what Year 0 readiness required, and what was missing.
B Corp submission workstreams | Governance, Materiality Assessment and training are underway with Graeme and Beth from Litmus leading these projects.
Product footprinting | Annual carbon reporting is now a structured process rather than a one-off project. Product-level footprinting is in scoping, designed to integrate with their new resourcePLM system — building towards Digital Product Passport readiness as EU regulation moves closer.
The outcomes
Bradshaw Taylor now has a defensible, auditable carbon position for the first time.Â
The internal ESG team have the dashboards and infrastructure to maintain that reporting themselves. The goal from the outset was to make them self-sufficient, not dependent on a consultant.
The B Corp gap analysis gave the business a clear, honest picture of where they stood against the new v2.1 requirements — completed ahead of the March 2026 deadline, so they entered the submission process with their eyes open rather than playing catch-up.
The supply chain transparency demands from European retail customers now have answers: Scope 3 data, published targets, a documented reduction strategy and a B Corp submission in progress.Â
Product footprinting — the next frontier for brands selling into regulated European markets — has a roadmap and is being integrated into the operational infrastructure rather than treated as a separate project.
They didn’t rush to hire a sustainability lead before the right structure existed. That structure is now in place – Watch this space.Â
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