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While supply chain traceability has become a much-discussed fashion industry priority, the steps to implementing it are unclear and complex. An open-source Traceability Playbook, launched in a second edition this month, is looking to close the gap.
The release of a second edition of the playbook by traceability platform TrusTrace, much improved and expanded, highlights the urgency of the subject for the fashion industry. The first, released in June 2022, outlined the business case for traceability, explained how to achieve the three levels of traceability (supplier mapping, product traceability and material traceability), and explored wider considerations including regulations, material innovation and the circular economy.
TrusTrace has partnered with Fashion Revolution and Fashion For Good on its Traceability Playbook, hoping to drive progress across the industry.
This year’s playbook — released again in collaboration with Fashion for Good, a global initiative — offers methodologies and templates to implement traceability, navigate new legislation, and standardise traceability on an industry-wide scale.
“A lot has happened in a year, and the need for traceability has become more widely understood, with a lot of companies hiring traceability managers and establishing teams to implement traceability,” Shameek Ghosh, CEO of TrusTrace, tells Vogue Business. “But, for most companies, this is the first time people are working with traceability. Nobody has done this before, so they’re lacking the roadmap and a clear guide as to how to implement traceability and get the value out of it that they’re seeking.”
The playbook is split into six chapters: defining your needs; navigating legislation and compliance risks; ensuring your organisation is aligned and ready; identifying the right solutions; ensuring implementation is successful; and defining what’s next for fashion.
Ghosh says one of the main problems is that sustainability and traceability teams are underfunded and under-resourced. “Implementing traceability is a big transformational project: it doesn t just affect the sustainability or traceability team, so it needs to get attention, resource and executive buy-in to succeed,” he says.
The stakes are high. With a wave of new legislation on the way, brands that don’t invest in traceability may fall behind. In the US, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, introduced in December 2021, takes steps against the import of goods from the Xinjiang region in China to protect against forced labour. New York’s Fashion Act, proposed in early 2022, has the potential to hold brands liable for garment workers’ lost wages. The Fabric Act, currently being reviewed in the US Senate, also protects workers’ rights. In the EU, a number of sustainable fashion regulations are being processed that could force an overhaul of supply chains — many of the proposed regulations are underpinned by traceability and transparency.
The challenge for brands
Brands are responding. “Legislation has played a significant role in helping to shape our strategy over the past year, with the understanding of the urgency,” Matthew Xu, CSR and sustainability lead at sportswear brand Asics, tells Vogue Business. Asics provided TrusTrace with an in-depth case study of its traceability programme for the second edition of the playbook. It’s been piloting TrusTrace’s product traceability and responsible sourcing programmes as well as using TrusTrace’s knowledge hub to stay up to date with new legislation.
Standardisation of traceability is much needed, a process that is being accelerated by the new legislative wave. “When we started out, each brand had their unique take on what they wanted out of traceability, and no two projects were the same. That makes it difficult to standardise requests to suppliers — it increases their time and efforts to respond and, ultimately, lowers innovation and efficiency,” says TrusTrace’s Ghosh.
A major challenge is the need to navigate regional differences with legislation and compliance, particularly between the US and the EU. “Different regulations require similar data, but the type of evidence and depth of production tier data differ,” Ghosh says. “What still needs to be achieved is a set standard and methodology for what we want to achieve as an industry, what data to collect and how to collect it. It needs to be easy for suppliers and other stakeholders to share information, and easy for consumers to compare data product information to make more informed choices.”
Asics’s Xu agrees. “One of the biggest challenges is lack of industry alignment on requirements, data and data accuracy, willingness to share data, and lack of alignment on system and processes to trace product and material,” he says. TrusTrace’s Ghosh adds that the data used by brands must be primary data, based on the impact of their actual supply chain rather than on averages. An emphasis on primary data ensures that actions taken will lead to genuine impact.
Tapestry, parent company of Coach and Kate Spade, also provided a case study of its traceability goals for the playbook. It has been leveraging TrusTrace’s solutions to gather fabric content data at Tier 3 level, following the materials back to Tier 2. “The long-term vision is to have traceability and transparency throughout the entire life cycle of a product,” says Sherry Fazal, senior manager of global ESG and sustainability solutions at Tapestry. “Our strategy in achieving our goal is not static. We listen to the experts, we flex to changes, we learn and re-invent when needed. For traceability, I believe progress is better than perfection.”
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