Adidas leads fashion and sportswear names in Kantar's consumer sustainability ranking

Adidas is the highest-ranked fashion or sportswear brand in the first edition of Kantar's Sustainability Consumer-led Brand Ranking, placing third overall in a study published in June 2026.

The German sportswear maker is joined in the global top 20 by The North Face in 11th, Veja in 16th, Nike in 17th and Dove in 18th, with cleaning brand Ecover topping the list.

The ranking measures how credible consumers find brands on sustainability and whether those perceptions strengthen the brand. Built on Kantar's BrandSustainability metrics, it assessed more than 2,160 brands across 12 countries and 12 categories, drawing on over 18,000 people surveyed in January 2026.

Kantar says it is not an ESG audit but a consumer-led measure, with sustainability defined by consumers themselves based on what matters most to them in each category.

For clothing, shoes and fashion, consumers globally named child labour, sweatshops and worker exploitation as their top concern, followed by harmful dyes and chemicals, and overproduction and overconsumption, according to the report.

The fashion and sportswear brands are used to illustrate recurring patterns rather than ranked on a single dimension. The North Face is cited for using technical performance to make its sustainability claims credible, with its recycled-material Futurelight fabric tested on Everest before reaching shops.

Adidas is highlighted for participation, having produced more than 30 million pairs of shoes using Parley Ocean Plastic by the end of 2020. Veja, which Kantar says spends nothing on advertising and redirects the budget into its supply chain, is presented as a case of restraint.

Kantar argues there is a commercial case for the category. Sustainability perceptions contribute up to 10 percent of brand value among some brands in the Kantar BrandZ Global Top 100, the firm says, and the importance of sustainability as a driver of brand demand has grown 25 percent over the last five years.

The study also found that scepticism remains a barrier: 57 percent of people globally say they have encountered false or misleading information about brands' sustainability efforts, while only 15 percent say they know a lot about what brands are actually doing.

The picture varies sharply by market. Of the 180 brands assessed in each country, the proportion achieving both credibility and positive brand impact ranged from over 80 in South Africa and Japan to under 50 in France, Brazil and the UK. Kantar's guidance to brands is to map local priorities before entering a market rather than deploy a single global message.

This article was created using AI and edited by an editor before publication.