It is common in the outdoor industry for factories to be contracted to produce products for multiple brands. Moreover, each company tends to have slightly different standards and audit procedures.

REI worked in collaboration with the Outdoor Industry Association and six partners - Black Diamond, Cascade Designs, GoLite, Kelty, MEC and YoungOne (a factory owner) - to develop and introduce the Fair Labor Toolkit in 2006.

With a widely accepted set of compliance standards and an implementation process, the toolkit is designed to help companies that do not have a compliance system or are too small to afford the resources to develop the mechanism.

By agreeing to a common set of standards under the Fair Labor Toolkit, the process of ensuring factory compliance will be more efficient for all outdoor companies and factories. This will ultimately serve to assure customers that the outdoor products they are buying were manufactured in a manner that is aligned with their values. The toolkit was launched in 2006. In 2007 REI plans to work with its industry partners to support adoption and use of the materials.