Ensuring product integrity has been a central theme in many of the conference I have attended this year and certainly a major topic of conversation in most, if not all, of my interviews of people involved in sustainability efforts throughout the apparel industry. It was also a focus of the Textile Exchange Sustainable Fashion workshop I attended last August and the Textile Exchange International Sustainable Textile Conference in Barcelona I attended last September.
Product integrity means that when a brand makes a sustainability claim about a product, such as saying it is made of organic cotton, made of recycled polyester or made in accordance with fair trade initiatives, the brand must be able to substantiate that claim. The risks of making false claims are high and the costs can be substantial in loss of consumer confidence, loss of revenue, risk to the brand’s image and ultimately litigation.
On January 13,2012, Textile Exchange (TE) held a webinar, “The Risk of Doing the Right Thing, an overview of the systems and strategies necessary to support sustainability claims for fibers.” addressing issues of product integrity throughout the supply chain. Ashley Gill, TE Program Administrator, Charlene Ducas, TE Sustainable Materials Expert and Ann Gillespie, TE Industry Integrity Team Coordinator addressed the risks faced by brands who decide to embrace sustainability and explained how certification can help to mitigate this risk.
Marketing a product as sustainable can create risk for a brand. To be successful, the brand needs to identify potential risks, mitigate these risks and develop a plan to handle the risks.
A primary risks a brand faces when making a sustainability claim is that their suppliers may not be equally committed to that claim. For example, let’s say a brand decides to produce a 100% organic cotton t-shirt. They approach their fabric supplier for organic cotton jersey. They fabric supplier obtains their organic cotton jersey from several mills, each of whom get their yarn from multiple suppliers who in turn buy fiber from multiple growers. How can the brand be sure that the fabric they get is actually “organic”? If any of the suppliers in the chain fail to ensure the organic standard of the product they product, the end fabric may not be 100% organic at all. You can see that with stage in the supply chain, the potential risk increases exponentially. This is why communication with and among all suppliers is key to building trust and mitigating risk.
The Textile Exchange presentation stressed that “Integrity is essential in maintaining the trust of farmers, processors, sellers and consumers and in ensuring the targeted social and environmental benefits are actually achieved.” And they suggested that companies successfully address integrity by:
1) Understanding the sustainability issues being addressed. Is the concern about organic or recycled fiber? Or is it about processing or social justice?
2) Taking a full life-cycle approach. This is particularly important when making sustainability claims to understand all the processes that effect the finished product. Take bamboo as an example. Bamboo is being marketed as a sustainable fiber because it comes from a renewable source. However, processing necessary to turn bamboo into a fiber is chemically intensive and thus not a good sustainable option. You have to look at the whole picture when assessing sustainable options.
3) Taking steps to verify the truth and accuracy of all claims being made. This is especially important in terms of product labeling. Product labeling laws are governmental standards that must be addressed, and failure to do so can be costly in terms of fines as well as loss of brand integrity and consumer trust. Product labeling laws are specific to different countries and must be met when shipping products overseas. To label a product as “organic”, it must meet certain standards as defined by the individual country. Failure to properly label garment may mean the product is prevented from entering that country.
4) Being transparent. Consumers respond positively to companies that “walk the talk” and aren’t afraid to show how they verify their claims.
So, how does a brand ensure the integrity of its product? A brand has several options, but there remains no perfect answer. Each option has pluses and minuses and ultimately, it is up to the brand to determine the process which makes most sense for its accepted level of risk
The main options available include:
- Vertical Integration. If a company is vertically integrated, it controls each step in the production process. this control provides the most complete form of verification is possible
- Internal Assurance. If a company is not vertically integrated, then obtaining internal assurance from each step of the supply chain is the next best option. When each supplier in the chain feeds data into a tracking system then verification can be achieved electronically.
- Data collection. Another option is data collection. Barcodes can collect information at each step of manufacturing and that data can be made available to consumers on a company’s website.. Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles is a good example. Consumers can key in their product’s barcode on the Patagonia website and see the entire life cycle of their product. Icebreaker is another brand with a similar tracker available to consumers.
- Certification: An increasingly popular option is the use of an independent, third party certification organization. Certification can confirm that a product meets certain standards established by industry and can do so at each step in the supply chain.
All of these options address the main issue of maintaining the chain of custody of the product as it moves through the manufacturing process. Chain of custody can be ensured through accurate data collection at each stage or by third party certification.
In my next post I will look at the various certifications bodies and industry standards used for certification.
