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A few years ago, traceability fell within the remit of brand sustainability teams. Now, it’s developing into a vital niche of its own as pressure builds from consumers, regulators and competitors. Companies such as Ralph Lauren, VF Corp and Chanel are leading the way.
“Across our industry, there’s an important movement to better understand where and how products are made, from farm to shelf,” says Katie Ioanilli, chief global impact and communications officer at Ralph Lauren. “This work is complex, but we believe it is critical for ensuring real integrity and accountability. That is why we are investing in resources in this space to meet multi-stakeholder demands and deliver lasting, positive impact.”
Initiatives that seek to give suppliers a stronger voice in forging the future of the fashion industry are gaining momentum. The hope is to tap their expertise and better match brands’ sustainability strategies with the realities of the supply chain.
Chanel says the sourcing of its raw materials is “a strategic issue” and it created a dedicated “responsible transformation” department to deal with this several years ago, including traceability. Material science brand Pangaia has a traceability function within its impact team, which Pangaia says is responsible for synthesising needs across stakeholder groups and finding solutions tailored to those needs, including supply chain mapping and certification management.
However, finding the right staff to lead these teams and setting them up for success is a complicated process, says Anja Sadock, head of marketing at supply chain transparency and traceability platform TrusTrace. “Sustainability teams used to be responsible for traceability, but they had no relationships with suppliers, so they were dependent on sourcing and purchasing teams to act as middlemen, which can be frustrating. We are seeing these roles consolidated more and more.”
Despite the challenges, brands are under pressure to act to comply with a wave of incoming sustainable fashion legislation and meet evolving consumer expectations, points out Jocelyn Wilkinson, a partner and associate director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “It’s complex and super cross-functional, and the state of data isn’t what we would want, but nobody should be waiting on this.”
There is a push from retailers too. Selfridges first launched its Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) in 2020, asking brands partners and suppliers to disclose information on their practices and the measures they have in place to meet the retailer’s ethical trade requirements, material commitments and Science Based Targets. Some 950 of its 4,900 partners completed this in 2021, but the goal is for every partner to have done so by 2030.
Finding the right talent
At VF Corp — which owns Supreme, Vans, The North Face and Timberland — traceability has been a dedicated function since 2017. Director of traceability and responsible materials Shanel Orton, who has been with the company throughout, says neither she nor any of her traceability colleagues had direct previous experience. “Our team has a wide range of experience, from textiles and materials to supply chain and regulatory compliance,” she explains. “It’s more important to find people who can be flexible, agile and open to creating new processes as we go. Strong communication skills are also crucial, because traceability is a new function for both internal stakeholders and suppliers, and that requires ongoing education.”
It’s a work in progress. “I see traceability developing like e-commerce,” says executive career consultant Tracy Short. “At first, there were no experts, just gurus and consultants with seemingly magic solutions. Companies relied on external advisors to help them before they were ready for an evolved internal function. The key is to find people with transferable skills and culture fit. The expertise will develop over time.”
BCG’s Wilkinson says brands should start with existing staff. “The best bet is to find someone who understands the business and its supply chain, who can anchor all the different stakeholder groups and drive impact in a trusted way,” she explains. “Trust is crucial to change management.”
How to structure the team
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for building traceability teams, says Wilkinson. “At the very least, the IT and supply chain teams need to work together. In an optimum state, product development, legal and marketing would be involved too. Brands can’t underestimate the level of engagement needed.”
Executive buy-in is crucial to unlocking funding and removing barriers to cross-functional collaboration, adds TrusTrace’s Sadock. “Traceability needs to be aligned with business goals so teams get the budget to deliver.”
VF Corp’s six-person traceability and responsible materials team works between the group’s Denver headquarters and its Singapore office, where the product supply hub for Asia sits. They report into the sustainability and responsibility team, which is part of the global supply chain team, run by the executive vice president of supply chain. “We do not work in silos,” says VF Corp’s Orton. “We are constantly engaging with our brand sustainability and product development teams, as well as the group leadership and legal teams.”
At fast fashion brand Mango, the “ultimate responsibility” for traceability lies with sustainability and sourcing global director Andrés Fernández. “Our sustainability department has three main teams: environmental issues, circular economy and social compliance. Traceability falls into the latter,” he explains. “Those roles are responsible for conducting social audits, making sure suppliers and factories comply with Mango’s code of conduct, and taking on any necessary remediation efforts for flaws we detect. Some of them are on the field, verifying the data we are sent and conducting training, while others are based at our headquarters in Barcelona.”
In smaller brands, the structure is more streamlined. Seasonless Swedish brand Asket doesn’t have a designer, so its product developer is tasked with building in traceability from the very first sketch. “There’s a risk that it becomes an afterthought, sitting in a sustainability department with a limited mandate that gets overruled by other teams,” says co-founder August Bard Bringéus. “It’s much harder to go back and trace a legacy product. We won’t create a product that we can’t trace all the way upstream.”
Setting traceability teams up for success
Since traceability is a hugely complex, ongoing challenge, brands need to think carefully about deliverables, says TrusTrace’s Sadock. “Where you start often boils down to compliance with laws and regulations. If you’re selling into the US, your first priority will be the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. If you’re selling a lot into France, your focus will be on recyclability and material composition because of the Anti-waste and Circular Economy Law.”
When VF Corp started on traceability, its goal was to create product supply chain maps, tracing 10 products back to the origin of their raw materials, explains Orton. This pilot was then scaled to 100 products, but the focus has since shifted from the product level to the material level. The new goal is to trace the complete supply chain for VF Corp’s five key materials by 2027: cotton, leather, natural rubber, wool and synthetics (which covers nylon and both virgin and recycled polyester).
“To measure success against this new goal, we’ve had to develop a robust due diligence process, so we can validate the information we collect through our annual surveys,” says Orton. “Most of this information is supplier-reported which is why we need such strong relationships with our suppliers. We rely on them to trace further upstream and make sure everything is accurate.”
Suppliers can be resistant to change, especially when multiple brand partners are pulling in different directions, implementing various time-consuming, costly and complicated traceability procedures. Part of the challenge for traceability teams is convincing suppliers of the need to change, upskilling them to deliver and streamlining processes to accelerate progress. The same is true of internal teams. “We can’t keep expecting the same amount of people to do more work in the same amount of time,” says BCG’s Wilkinson. “That’s where you get exhaustion and fatigue, which limits implementation.”
In an ideal world, brands would share learnings and technology platforms to minimise work for suppliers and maximise progress, says TrusTrace’s Sadock. “A lot of brands will probably make the same mistakes in parallel, because they’re not convening. You need industry groups to achieve impact.”
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