How To Buy Better Brands

If you think buying a pair of trainers can’t change the world, think again. At a time when the climate crisis feels overwhelming and most of us have lost faith in politicians, there’s one surprisingly powerful force that still has the potential to drive positive change: brands. Yes, brands, the very entities many have accused of fuelling overconsumption, might just be our best shot at designing a more sustainable future. It’s not about mindlessly shopping our way out of a crisis. It’s about supporting the brands that are genuinely reimagining what growth can look like: not more stuff, but better stuff. Not short-term hype, but long-term purpose.

After three decades working with everyone from Levi’s to LVMH to Nike, I reached a point when I had to ask myself a tough question: am I helping preserve a world for future generations or am I playing a part in harming it? I’ve spent most of my career helping brands grow. I’ve been designing desire, fuelling sales, chasing market share and generally making things ‘cool’. And I was good at it. But slowly the world was changing around me. I started seeing first-hand how climate change was hammering the mountain ecosystems where I loved to spend my time. Brands like mountaineering specialist Simond (now part of Decathlon), born in 1860 in the Chamonix Valley, were starting to struggle with the contradiction of selling more gear to explore increasingly endangered landscapes. In their case, witnessing a glacier on their doorstep melting fast, focused minds.

I started to realise that the old growth model of more, faster, cheaper, wasn’t just broken; it was dangerous and destroying some of the very habitats that the outdoor brands I worked with depended on for their existence.

So I wrote The Brand New Future; How Brands Can Save The World, as a reckoning and a roadmap. A guide to building brands that don’t just look good or perform well, but leave a net positive impact. Brands that regenerate, not deplete. It’s about moving from “more stuff” to “more meaning”. Because in a world on fire, we don’t have the luxury of just making things cool anymore.

Why Brands Matter
For centuries, we looked to monarchs, then politicians, then celebrities for direction. We used to put our faith in them. But in 2025, we’re much more cynical. Our belief systems have changed. The new centres of influence aren’t necessarily in parliaments or other traditional institutions; instead, they’re on shelves. The brands we buy shape how we live, what we value and what gets made next.

At their best, brands have an emotional pull that can change behaviour at scale. They’re powerful storytellers. But the best ones today aren’t just telling stories, they’re doing them. They’re not just reflecting the world; they’re helping redesign it.

As a brand designer who’s worked to build and shape 250 global brands, I’ve come to believe this: if we redesign brands, we can redesign growth. And if we redesign growth, we can reshape the world.

What Good Looks Like
There’s no theory without proof. Here are a few examples of brands I’ve worked with that are not just profitable, but also purposeful; brands that are walking the walk of regeneration and responsibility.

1. Arc’teryx – Designing for Longevity
Arc’teryx taught us what happens when you design not just for performance, but for time. We helped them embed long functional and aesthetic life expectancy into their DNA; jackets built to last and still look good enough that you want to wear them after two decades. That idea came from our earlier work with Levi’s, where we developed a strategy around “elegant decay” – treating wear and tear not as damage, but as character. A pair of jeans that ages with you, mapping your life into the fabric, creating a patina that is unique to the wearer. We took that thinking and reimagined it for Arc’teryx and their technical outerwear.

2. Daylesford Organic – Influence Over Scale
Daylesford will never be the world’s biggest food producer, but it could be the most influential. We repositioned them around the idea that real value isn’t in mass production, but in regenerative farming, longevity and taste. It’s about changing how we see food: £20 for a chicken sounds expensive until you design your week’s meals around it and realise it’s fed your family for four days. That’s not premium, it’s smart.

3. Strike – Healing the Planet
With Strike, a footwear brand for anglers, we asked: what if a shoe didn’t just avoid harm, but actively healed the planet? Strike is made from ocean plastic and funds ocean clean-ups with every pair sold. But more than that, we built the brand around a mission: to turn marine waste into momentum. It’s a product with purpose, where every step attempts to make a dent in the problem.

4. Mad About Land – Beautiful, Compostable, Regenerative
Mad About Land was born out of a simple ambition: to design gardening clothing that leaves the land better than we found it. Every item is designed not just for wear, but for graceful return to the Earth at end of life, using materials and construction aimed at compostability. The aesthetic is sharp and desirable, with a goal to shift consumer behaviour not through guilt, but through covetability. Good design leads, and in this case, it regenerates too. And when something looks this good, people start changing their habits not out of guilt, but because they want to. That’s a really powerful notion but often gets lost when we talk about encouraging people to want to buy sustainably.

5. Houdini – Circularity as a Platform
Houdini is a Scandinavian outdoor clothing brand built around circularity. We helped them reimagine their future not as a standalone brand, but also as a component brand. By that we mean a design platform that others can plug into; a trusted source of circular design IP that can sit inside other fashion and luxury brands to help transform the industry from within. Wherever you see a Houdini label – whether on a jacket or in a collab – you know the product has been built with regeneration at its core. This isn’t just about great outerwear. It’s about rewriting the system.

Why It’s On Us
You might ask: so what? I’m not a CEO. I can’t enter boardrooms and make change happen. I just want to buy well and do good.

Here’s the thing: we all vote, every day, with our wallets. Supporting brands like the ones I’ve talked about sends a message: this is what good looks like. It’s how we make space for political change, by shifting consumer behaviour first. It’s a joyful, uplifting message, knowing that we all can have a role to play.

And here’s the thing. We don’t need everyone to care. History shows that just 10% of people, committed to change, can tip the balance. Think of it like this: on a battlefield, it’s been said that only 1 in 10 soldiers actually shoot to kill, but they shape the entire outcome. That’s people like us.

The New Growth
My one main parting message is that we all try to back brands that are choosing to grow differently, not just chasing scale, but building meaning. The future belongs to those that treat purpose as their product. Brands that measure success not just by what they sell, but by what they change. 

My focus now is about redesigning growth to work for a planet with limits. Not more things, but better ideas. Not just GDP, but impact per product.

Take Simond: my team is helping it move beyond just selling gear to offering things like education in sustainable climbing, rental and repair services and wellbeing support for mountain communities. In other words, they’re not just selling jackets, they’re rebuilding a culture of care for the outdoors.

Or Chloé, the first luxury fashion house to become a B Corp. They’re tracking every product against real-world impact: things like living wages, gender equality and job satisfaction in their supply chain.

These aren't gestures. They’re signs that business can change if we demand better, and reward better, with what we buy. We can all apply pressure.

Maybe we can’t shop our way completely out of the climate crisis. But we can buy the change we want to see.

The Brand New Future; How Brands Can Save The World. Now read: How To Shop Better Outside The Supermarket and more thought-provoking pieces from our Journal