Approach to reporting

Our approach to reporting

Our ambition is to be the best sporting goods company in the world. We have long said that part of being the best is being sustainable: creating a company that balances profits with respect for the people who make our products, our employees and the wider environment. We also recognise we have a responsibility to report on our progress in these areas each year, accounting to our stakeholders for our social and environmental performance.

Scope

This year's sustainability performance review covers the efforts made in 2008 across all the Group brands (adidas, Reebok, TaylorMade) to improve workplace conditions in our direct and indirect supply chain. These are the suppliers with whom we have a direct business relationship and also those that are contracted by agents or licensees. The review also includes our performance with respect to the environment, our employees and the communities where we operate.

We have determined these areas as our key material issues through our own risk management process and through various engagements with stakeholders.

Determining this year's focus

We set ourselves demanding targets, which means we are never satisfied with what we have done in the past - we want to go further and do more. This is true in our efforts to be a sustainable business and in the way we report our progress.

This year we have reflected on what really matters. To us as a sporting goods company, sport matters. Performance is one of our Group values that we have taken from sport. In the field of sustainability reporting, what matters most is our performance and our progress against the targets we set ourselves for 2008.

So this year, we have expanded those two sections and structured our reporting around them. For context we have included a more detailed explanation of our strategic priorities and of the issues that challenged us in 2008.

This review does not include stories that illustrate the approach we have taken. But there is more analysis of our performance, highlighting key findings and trends from our data. And we have also explained how the targets we set ourselves deliver our strategy, the reasons for the progress we have made and what we have learnt from our efforts.

Updating during the year

At several points in the review we refer readers to our corporate website which has a sustainability section that provides some of the background to our approach. It also includes a statements section, which we have regularly updated during the year with our responses to particular issues raised by stakeholders. We will continue to provide regular updates on our corporate website during 2009.

Our hope is that this sustainability performance review is a powerful resource for our readers. It aims to set our performance and progress in context, but also help the reader to find their way quickly and easily to the results of our efforts to be a sustainable company in 2008.

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