These Are the Most Exciting Outdoor Start-Ups

With the Basecamp of Inspiration in Hall B4, OutDoor by ISPO offers young brands with fresh ideas an open platform.

Selected winners of ISPO Brandnew present themselves and their products here. Sporty, digital, sustainable. ISPO.com shows the most interesting start-ups.

Using wood as a material for bicycles and thereby taking advantage of the natural properties of the material. This is the concept of the Austrian start-up My Esel.

The winner of ISPO Brandnew 2018 produces mountain bikes, racing bikes and even e-bikes with wooden frames. My Esel exclusively uses the wood of slowly growing native trees. Advantage over aluminium and carbon: Wood absorbs vibrations and shocks much better due to its natural structure.

Particularly sustainable: the frames are so durable that they survive the growth phases of newly planted trees. My Esel builds its bikes in three different sizes - S, M and L. Custom-made bikes are also available at an extra charge.

The Bavarian start-up ProteGear has specialized in intelligent emergency call and tracking systems. At their debut at OutDoor by ISPO, they show A*LIVE, the world's first SmartSafety tool with 100 percent global coverage. Compact in size and weighing just 120 grams, the emergency call system can be used for all outdoor activities.

If the wearer of the handy emergency call system finds himself in a precarious situation, the device makes an emergency call. At the push of a button or, if this is no longer possible, automatically. A*LIVE uses the mobile network for communication.

At places where this is not available - for example when hiking at high altitudes - the emergency call including position data is transmitted via satellite. Thanks to the connection to the global network of GEOS Safety Solutions, help is around the corner anywhere in the world.

You have a creative idea for an innovative product but don't know how to manufacture it? This is where Matchory's makers come in. The start-up not only helps in the search for the most suitable manufacturer, but also supports you in every phase of the procurement and production process.

From a database of over 300 million verified pieces of information on more than 1.5 million suppliers, the manufacturers with the most experience with similar products are selected. "If particularly sustainable production is important to you, that's no problem either," explained Nils Liskien, creative director of Matchory.

Who has actually determined that functional clothing is not colorful? 15 ski sports and fashion experts from the Allgäu region asked themselves the same question and decided to change this by founding The FreiSein Project. The label specializes in "All Mountain Products" made of merino wool and light, fast-drying functional fabrics. The eye-catching, colorful garments radiate pure joie de vivre from every fiber. Real eye-catchers.

The materials used come from sustainable textile production. Production takes place in Central America, in El Salvador. Environmentally harmful substances are excluded from the Bluesign-certified production process from the outset. The sublimation printing process produces colorful and absolutely light and wash resistant shirts, each of which tells its own story.

Sightseeing and training unites the French start-up Runnin'City with the smartphone app of the same name. Over 100 cities are included in Runnin'City. For each of them there are several circuits of different lengths along the most famous sights. There are currently more than 1000 tourist routes worldwide, 40 in Paris alone.

When running in the city, the app tracks the location via GPS. If a tourist attraction is passed, the app user receives a 30-second message containing the relevant information about the attraction he is currently passing. In addition, Runnin'City has all the features of a classic running app. It measures distance, duration, speed, altitude difference and calories burned.

The portable training station YoRoller is an innovation from Austria. Unlike conventional static fitness equipment, resistance is generated by the centrifugal forces generated by the rotation of the flywheels. Because the YoRoller reacts dynamically to the movements of the user, the training load can be controlled individually.

Its compact design makes the YoRoller mobile. Attached to a stable column, such as a tree, the training can begin immediately. For this idea, YoRoller already received the ISPO Brandnew Award in winter 2019.

Special highlight: gravity is of no importance in this type of training. That's why the YoRoller is even suitable for outdoor use in weightlessness. First contacts with the US space agency NASA have already been established.