Consumers have
always cared about quality, but until recent years, they took this on trust by
buying from brands with a reputation that rested on only a few characteristics,
such as style, color and hardwearing fabrics. While these remain the primary
purchase motivations, we must now add many more, almost all of which relate to
how the brand treats its customers, its workers, suppliers and, ultimately, the
planet.
It is no longer
enough for brands to value signal and greenwash their sustainability
credentials on the Corporate and Social Responsibility page of their website,
they are now expected by a growing cohort of customers to demonstrate HOW they
are sustainable. They don’t just want
the evidence of words, they want to see action – put simply, fashion brands can
no longer be ‘all talk and no trousers’.
The cost of not
doing so backfired on a number of brands between 2018 and 2020, as they were
forced to deal with criticism over working conditions, air freight and
environmental impact of goods being dumped into landfill sites. This backlash
has been amplified by the growth of social media that enables consumers to share
images and insights with each across the globe.
Any doubts as
to how seriously many consumers take these issues are dispelled by the growth
of the second-hand market, with more and more people preferring to cut down on
how many garments they buy new, and shop from online markets, such as Depop, Vinted
and Thredup.
Dedagroup Stealth
has partnered with industry bodies on the development of sustainability indices
that will enable brands to demonstrate how sustainable they are to customers,
shareholders, customs and regulators. And Dedagroup Stealth is providing the
technology that will enable brands to gather, store and report on the data that
underpins these activities.
Fortunately,
many brands are showing the way ahead, as the Fashion Transparency Index from Fashion Revolution shows, and now in its fifth
year. In 2020, it reviewed 250 of the world’s largest fashion brands and
retailers and ranked them according to how much they disclose about their
social and environmental policies, practices and impacts. This year, an update
on this report will show what progress has been made and how that will have
been affected by Covid.
The
Transparency Index Report emphasizes that complete transparency even in the
most upstream areas of the Supply Chain is the best way to ensure good
relations with the various stakeholders, resolve conflicts and guarantee a direct
benefit to the brands themselves.
While in 2019 in Biarritz in France, around 20%
of the world fashion industry made a firm commitment to sustainability by
signing the Fashion Pact. As a foundation, they used the “Sustainable
Development Goals” set during a United Nations conference, which it was agreed
were essential to offset the consequences of ignoring the damage the industry
was causing to the environment. In particular, it identified three main areas
where protective action was necessary: Climate, Biodiversity and Oceans.
Measuring
sustainability so that it can be demonstrated to the public and other
stakeholders is hard and getting harder, as the breadth of measures increases,
soon to include things like diversity in senior management and the wider
workforce as well as traditional ‘green’ credentials. Consider also the challenges
of documenting things that may not have been covered in the past, such as the
source of raw materials, particularly challenging to retailers that buy direct
from manufactures and have no involvement in production.
Fortunately,
tools developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), as part of the Higg
Index enables fashion brands of all sizes to accurately measure and evaluate
their sustainability performance.
Both qualitative and quantitative measures and analysis mean brands can
create a Materiality Assessment that defines their competitive advantage as well
as sustainability engagement.
SAC was founded
in 2009 by Walmart and Patagonia to bring together suppliers and producers from
the fashion world to develop a single universal approach for measuring
sustainability indices. Today it has more than 200 participants from 35
countries with a combined turnover from fashion of $500 billion.
Technology is
therefore central to interpreting and enabling these new needs to be put in
action, working at the very heart of the brand to manage the entire supply
chain in harmony with data so that brands can increase their competitive
advantage whilst knowing that their social and environmental commitments meet
the needs of all stakeholders.
Sustainability
performance, if it is well integrated into company IT systems, can dictate new
rules and allow the company to take precise actions, monitor them through
timely feedback and consequently achieve the desired shared value concretely.
Digital transformation of the entire supply chain allows the creation of these
new models and extends the benefits to the entire community.
