Fashion REVOLUTION 2021: What is a sustainable supply chain and why you should care

Every year for Fashion Revolution Week, we want to share why our sandals are made through a sustainable, transparent supply chain. At this moment in time, we think it’s important to share why caring about our supply chains is vital for all our goods especially as more and more brands claim sustainability.

In this pandemic, we have seen our world turned upside down and have had issues buying things we need as international borders closed one after the other and significantly, countries have closed all but non-essential services. We saw how this was incredibly dangerous for medical staff who couldn’t access personal protective equipment in many countries. With countries no longer manufacturing their own or relying on parts to be made elsewhere, it is a dangerous predicament to be in.

Why has this happened? Primarily, this is due to manufacturing and supply chains being offshored so as to take advantage of lower costs in developing countries. With developing countries looking to grow their economies, attracting foreign direct investment and competing in a global market place, many relax labour, environmental and tax regulations to make sure they’re the ones chosen by multinationals or big brands to manufacture in or source from. This has led to many being paid a pittance for their work but also decimated manufacturing in many countries.

But what is a supply chain and why can it go wrong? A supply chain is an entire system of producing and delivering a product or service, from sourcing the raw materials to the final delivery of the product or service to end users. So taking sandals as an example, the raw materials would mean leather (uppers as well as for the sole), hardware (buckles, shoe tacks) and miscellaneous items(rubber grips for the sole etc) would be the inputs of the supply chain. Additionally, if a brand doesn’t produce their own sandals in house, they have to find someone else to do it which is another stop on the supply chain. So this means we’re going to be looking at least 4 suppliers of raw materials and potentially 1 manufacturer. That means potentially 5 areas where there may be an issue that arises that we can’t fix directly. Using our example of sandals, one issue could be sourcing leather from a country that doesn’t respect environment regulation or doesn’t have high occupational health and safety standards. As leather processing can be quite chemical intensive, particularly if it uses chrome, there could be great repercussions to the environment if effluent runoff is not done properly. Furthermore, chrome is dangerous for people and could not only affect the workers but indirectly communities where the effluent is left to runoff. Another issue that may arise is that of workers’ rights, if we were to work with a manufacturer to make the sandals, how are we to know that they’re definitely paying the workers the right wage or that they are not working 24 hours a day? Or are they potentially outsourcing to other factories that have less stringent requirements? There is only so much auditing one can do and be physically present to really understand what is going on. After all, we’ve seen and heard it time again, brands not knowing (or pretending not to know) that people were being paid a pittance for their skilled work in fast, premium and luxury fashion or footwear. This can be happening in developing or developed countries. We’re now also seeing that more of these big brands are starting to delay payments or cancel orders already in production which will put more people already in fragile circumstances in even more danger. So knowing your favourite brand’s supply chain is important.

All this to say, as we think about how we will rebuild our world once this passes, we as businesses and, most importantly, as consumers should think about how we choose to move ahead. Businesses should not just be looking at revenue and speed as indicators of success but how they contribute positively to society and the environment they’re in. As consumers, we should support businesses that have put in the work to creating transparent supply chains and even manufacture their own goods.