Developing a Sustainable Outdoor Business - Case Study

Adapt How You Perceive Things in the Outdoors

Inspired by a visit to New Zealand, or Aotearoa as it is called by the Maori, in 2013 to study how businesses approached ‘green adventure’, Lorcan, by chance, fell in with Maori outdoor recreationists and the experience totally changed his perspective on how to approach developing a sustainable outdoor business.

Before this in his earlier interactions with more ‘westernised’ outdoor businesses in Aotearoa / New Zealand, Lorcan actually saw little difference between them and outdoor businesses in Northern Ireland.

“Everything I looked at wasn’t intrinsically different from what we do here, they just had more money. The Maori had a completely different approach. One of the main things they wanted you to understand, as an introduction, was instead of trying to see plants and animals just as things you encounter… these living beings are brothers and sisters. They have a kin relationship.”

This was something totally different to what Lorcan had seen before. After a hike through Whirinaki Forest with Maori outdoor company Te Urewere Treks, his Maori guide helped him plant a tree. “E Tipu, E Toro, E Tu” is said over it, a Maori blessing covering the young, middle and old age of the living plant.

“It was spiritual with the Maori, not with a capital ‘S’, but just the mind shift of not seeing ourselves as separate from all these other beings. We should care for them like a younger brother or sister; revere them like a grandparent if it’s a big old oak tree, that sort of thing.”

Lead by Example

The tangible things which the Far and Wild team do are significant and certainly could be an aspiration – where possible – for other businesses. They don’t have any electricity or running water (they use rainwater for all their wet-suit washing). Their lights are battery powered and they don’t use motorised craft as part of their activities. They share toilets with another local community hub on site. They are mobile, all admin is done from home.

It is worth considering whether you have to build your own empire or whether you can use what is already there that you could partner with. Ask yourself, ‘Do I need to get bigger and better and grow or am I okay as I am, growing slowly this way?’

It might at times seem like other businesses are expanding in dramatic ways but more and more, customers are valuing the ethos of a company. If your company’s value set matches that of the emerging and rapidly expanding market, you may benefit in the long run.

The Importance of Hiring the Right People

When he came home from Aotearoa / New Zealand, one of the key things which was adopted for Far and Wild in an effort to further this mindset of kinship with the outdoors, was to hire people who would understand and appreciate the connection, meaning ecologists and environmentalists, to complement existing staff with outdoor recreation backgrounds.

Lorcan explained, “We brought in staff with an entirely new skill-set of knowledge our outdoor recreation staff didn’t get through their NGBs.”

He also assisted in the development of criteria to help outdoor companies be more sustainable through working with people like Mike McClure from Sport NI and Maura Lyons at Leave No Trace Ireland.

This sharing of knowledge is a common theme across the conversation.

‘These days the skill set for staff who are outdoor instructors or tour guides has broadened, lessening the emphasis on hard skills and leaning more towards interpretive nous and understanding of ecology. A mix of both in any guide is ideal but we find that it is easier to teach the hard skills to those with the soft skills, than to train those with the hard skills in the soft ones. This is to do with the fact that the education in hard skills has traditionally come from an industrial rather than a vernacular base. Tying a good knot in a climbing rope was always considered more important than understanding the weave in an Aran Sweater. Well nowadays, with clients seeking less hard adventure, the softer side of guiding is beginning to become more prominent.’

Identify Your Relationship with the Customer

Another way in which the Far and Wild experience leads in developing a sustainable model is in how it views itself in tandem with nature and the customer.

“One of the principal ways in which we view our relationship with the outdoors is as a triangular one. The model we work off is that we are only there to facilitate putting customers there and making sure they’re safe. This means the value outcomes are based on how nature and the customer interact together.”

Along a similar vein, Lorcan stresses that if your business model is dedicated exclusively to making money from your customers, it probably won’t be a success from a sustainable business point of view. By its very definition, a sustainable business isn’t concerned with maximising profit at the expense of extracting everything from our resources.

“Business owners have their own choice to make, about where to put themselves along that spectrum. As a Community Interest Company, Far and Wild reinvests its profits in its mission, while paying staff a reasonable wage. The incentive for growth is not to simply benefit the owner/s, but to provide a meaningful service. I find it hard to justify maximising profit from a business based in the environment. I’d call that ‘redistributing’ resources from nature into personal wealth, not contributing to sustainable resources. In fact the word ‘resource’ is problematic in itself!”

“There are subtleties, judgements to be made and every business will have different challenges.”

The Benefits of Connection and Community

A final suggestion for businesses to consider in their bid to become more sustainable is to consider the potential benefits of tying in greater connections with the local community. That could mean local businesses as well as the local people themselves.

This, Lorcan believes, is one area where the island of Ireland is significantly ahead of many other nations.

“The values behind the community held approach are actually survival values. You survive in a community, not on your own, and many communities understand this intimately because of our social history.”

The same too can be said for your business. Local adventures, which are slightly different to micro adventures, are a growing field, the idea behind which is to reduce the need to go further away and use more resources. Learning new things and relearning forgotten lore about your area can help to develop customers’ sense of identity and culture. This leads directly to the desire to protect and improve what they see.

Ultimately this links back with the wider need to be sustainable. At a time when social deprivation has arguably increased, if you’re running a business just for the monetary value of paying customers rather than considering what is happening to the ground under your feet and the sea you are swimming in, you aren't really seeing the opportunities.

“If you listen to what you are being told, the feedback from the land and the waters that is, the answers are clearly there. As guides and leaders we are ideally placed to focus attention on what nature wants us to learn. We’re trying to listen to those voices, to be flexible and focus on the bigger need we are meeting.”

You can find more information about Far and Wild on their website.