About the Report

REI's third stewardship report covers the co-op's activities and performance related to our social and environmental efforts during the 2008 calendar year. The performance metrics and data shared within this online report include our operations and facilities (headquarters, distribution centers, retail locations and supply chain manufacturing).

The 2008 report provides an update on our progress toward our stated goals and milestones achieved and a discussion of our stewardship priorities. Our report is an important part of our continual work to implement our initiatives and programs, apply our learnings, measure against our goals, and share our progress and challenges with REI's stakeholders.

Our objective remains to be transparent in our actions and hold ourselves accountable to our members, customers, communities and employees.

Defining Stewardship

REI's purpose is to inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship. At the co-op, being good stewards is reflected in how we care for the world where we all play, work and live, and how we connect people to nature. Specifically, our efforts are designed to:

• Facilitate the active conservation of nature
• Inspire the responsible use and enjoyment of the outdoors
• Enhance the natural world and our communities through responsible business practices
• Foster opportunities to increase participation levels in outdoor recreation, with a focus on young people
• Maintain REI as an employer of choice, where employees are highly engaged in the vision of the company and are reflective of the diversity of our communities where we have a presence

Report Structure

REI's 2008 stewardship report is structured into the three content sections — Community – philanthropic efforts and nonprofit partnerships centered on outdoor recreation and conservation, and advocacy; Environment – initiatives and efforts to reduce our overall impact on the planet; and People – the co-op's workplace and fair labor compliance with vendor factory partners. For additional details on the content of each section, please visit the report's table of contents.

Materiality

To determine the most relevant subjects to include in REI's 2008 stewardship report, we built on the foundation we established in our first two reports. The scope of our reporting is for calendar year 2008, and was informed by internal and external stakeholders: employees, leadership, REI's board of directors, members and customers, local community constituents, nonprofit partners and advocacy groups. REI's board of directors provides broad input into our overall stewardship goals, metrics and measurement.

REI's business objectives and long-term strategic plans also served as a basis for determining relevancy, as did co-op policies, programs and initiatives. While the process for determining relevancy was primarily a cross-functional internal effort, we consulted with external experts to help establish REI's priorities for reporting on our corporate responsibility and stewardship.

All past REI stewardship reports are archived and maintained with open access for future reference, and complement additional information presented on REI.com/stewardship.

Comments

We welcome your thoughts on our 2008 stewardship report through the following survey or email at stewardship@rei.com. Your feedback supports our ongoing goal of providing relevant information that is important to our members, customers, partners, employees and others.