Labor RightsNicole Vander MeulenDecember 18, 2019

Fashion’s Next Trend: Accelerating Supply Chain Transparency in the Garment and Footwear Industry

Labor RightsNicole Vander MeulenDecember 18, 2019

ICAR is pleased to announce the publication of "Fashion’s Next Trend: Accelerating Supply Chain Transparency in the Garment and Footwear Industry," the second report from the Transparency Pledge coalition. Building on the coalition’s previous efforts, this report takes stock of supply chain transparency as of late 2019, updates information from the 2017 report “Follow the Thread," provides an overview of positive new developments in the industry, and makes additional recommendations aimed at improving apparel companies’ due diligence practices on human rights.

Background

In 2016, nine human rights and labor rights organizations, together with global unions, formed a coalition to improve transparency in garment and footwear supply chains. The coalition created the Transparency Pledge, a minimum standard of supply chain transparency that enables advocates, workers, and consumers to find out where a brand’s products are made. The coalition reached out to more than 70 companies with own-brand label products, urging them to align their supply chain disclosure practices with the Transparency Pledge standard and advance industry good practice. The results of that engagement were detailed in the coalition’s first report “Follow the Thread: the need for Supply Chain Transparency in the Garment and Footwear Industry,” which was published in 2017.

About the Report

After publishing Follow the Thread, as part of its efforts to raise the industry bar on transparency, the coalition continued to engage with many companies included in the 2017 report. Additionally, since mid-2018 the coalition has also engaged with seven Responsible Business Initiatives (RBIs). The coalition urged them to play a leadership role by requiring companies, as a condition of membership, to publicly disclose information about their supply chains by January 2020, at minimum, in alignment with the Transparency Pledge standard. Finally, given the growing significance of online retail, the coalition wrote to two large online retailers—Amazon and Zalando—in 2018 (and had previously reached out to online retailer ASOS in 2016). The coalition urged them to publish their own-brand supplier factories lists aligned with the Transparency Pledge.

“Fashion’s Next Trend” details the results of this engagement. It describes how dozens of brands and retailers are publicly disclosing information about their supplier factories, which has become a widely accepted step toward better identifying and addressing labor abuses in garment supply chains. It also lays out the action or lack there-of of seven key RBIs in response to the coalition’s call for leadership on this issue. The report provides counter-arguments to common alleged barriers to supply chain transparency and discusses the importance of making published factory lists accessible and useable by aligning them with the Open Data Standard for the Apparel Sector (ODSAS). Finally, the report concludes with key recommendations for companies, RBIs, and governments.