“Our winning products offer ingenious functions and mechanisms at an extremely high level. The specific application was thought through right to the end, with the product being designed to be very user-friendly,” says Christoph Beaufils, who is responsible together with Christina Rabl for the ISPO Award. “In the material composition, consideration is given increasingly often to circularity or at least clean recycling,” Christina Rabl adds.

What’s special about the ISPO Award is that half of the jury is always made up of business professionals and regularly changing sports-minded consumers from the ISPO Collaborators Club. That ensures that the discerning consumer’s perspective is always included.

The criteria used by the jury in its assessment are tough: Only those who obtain at least 45 out of a maximum of 60 possible points in a total of nine different criteria win an ISPO Award. At the first jury meeting of 2023, only 14 submitted products managed to clear this hurdle.

Clever ideas instead of batteries and chemicals

For example, Climfeet: There have already been a number of insoles for athletes with an air-conditioning effect, but they needed batteries or chemicals, which meant they were hardly sustainable. The ISPO Award winner Climfeet now shows that it can also be done differently. The new climate insoles are less than 6 millimeters thick and only require the pressure of the human foot to activate their cooling function.

ISPO Award winner Climfeet is in the best of company. Whether it’s a comfortable winter tent, a hiking boot adapted to suit female and male users, a multifunctional avalanche backpack, or innovative trekking poles for men and women, all the winners from the first jury meeting for the ISPO Award 2023 not only solve special challenges but also stand out due to their quality and sustainability down to the last detail, and take account of gender-specific characteristics. “To win an ISPO Award, it’s not enough to just be good – ISPO Award winners must be excellent and innovative enough to also convince the most discerning customers,” says Christoph Beaufils.

Specialists and all-rounders gaining ground

Another jury insight: Multi-purpose products for versatile use in a number of disciplines are gaining ground, as are innovations developed for highly specialized use.

The ISPO Award winners also show that the outdoor boom remains unbroken, with outdoor products representing the majority of the winners. Nevertheless, there are also prizewinners from other areas. The Eco Grip Disc from Evergreen Barbel, for instance, makes lifting weights sustainable. While weights were previously produced primarily in Asia from iron mined there, Evergreen Barbel uses more than 80% recycled materials from Europe that would have otherwise ended up here in the trash.