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Fashion’s Next Trend. Accelerating Supply Chain Transparency in the Apparel and Footwear Industry

Transparency about supply chains in the garment and footwear industry is a rapidly growing trend. The complex network of global suppliers that apparel and footwear companies use to produce their goods is much less opaque than only a few years ago. Knowing factory details revealing workers, labor organizations, human rights groups, and others to swiftly alert apparel company representatives to labor abuses in those factories, giving companies an opportunity to intervene—sooner rather than later—to stop and rectify abuses. It also facilitates brand collaboration and collective action to stop, prevent, mitigate, and provide a remedy for labor abuses.

In 2016, nine human rights and labor rights organizations, together with global Union, formed a coalition to improve transparency in garment and footwear supply chains. The coalition reached out to more than 70 companies with own-brand label products, urging them to publish on their websites a list of the names, addresses, and other details of at least the factories involved in assembling, embellishing, and finishing their goods (called tier-1 factories).

After the coalition’s first report in 2017, the 2019 report now shows a significant increase in the number of companies that have published the details of their tier-1 supplier factories (35 percent of 200 brands). The report presents different levels of progress, opposed barriers for supply chain transparency and takes a closer look at the cases of online retailers. In addition to that, the coalition summarizes company transparency practices, points out the advantages of technology and gives general recommendations.

Scope: 20 pages
Reference: free of charge to Download as PDF file or Short version in German