Good business

Supply Chain

The success of a fashion business rests on an effective supply chain! As an ethical brand you have to balance financial considerations with the need to maintain decent labour conditions and fair wages in your supply chain and address the environmental impact of your production process. Once again transparency is the key, you can’t do everything at once; simply be clear about the issues you are addressing now and the issues you are working to address in the future

Understanding each area of your supply chain and developing good relationships with your manufacturers and suppliers is vital if you are to achieve ongoing success. Carefully research each faze of production and assess how you can begin to create a financially, environmentally and socially sustainable model. Efficiency is the key, where can you save money without compromising your ethics?

Accreditation

One way to ensure the ethical credibility of your product and to communicate these credentials to your customer is through internationally recognised accreditation. The problem is there is a confusing array of accreditations and it’s hard to know which ones are suitable and affordable for your business. One thing’s for sure; if you are confused then the customer is confused!

As a start up business it may be simpler to look at creating a code of conduct for your supply chain, this can form part of the contract between you and your suppliers/manufacturers and can be developed on the basis of internationally recognised standards

On this page we have compiled a list of useful links to organisations who can help and advise you about available accreditation and outline some of the standards you can use as a benchmark for your code of conduct.