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With legislation around supply chain transparency on the horizon, brands are scrambling to retrieve data from their suppliers, crunch the numbers and use the insights to deliver genuine impact. Tapestry has been on this journey for the past five years. So, what has it learnt?
In 2019, the US company (which owns Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman, and has agreed a deal to acquire rival Capri Holdings) set the goal of being able to trace the origins of 95 per cent of its raw materials by 2025. But Tapestry was using basic survey tools and Excel sheets to map its supply chain, and that strategy wasn’t scalable.
In August 2022, Tapestry struck a deal with traceability platform TrusTrace to streamline the process, using TrusTrace as a platform for suppliers to share data and build the foundations for meeting regulatory requirements. To date, Tapestry has onboarded nearly all Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers to TrusTrace and has begun or completed mapping the majority of PVC, leather, cotton, polyester, and nylon supply chains.
“Regulation is coming, so instead of being in the position where all we do is try and respond and react and disclose, we use traceability to peak around the corner,” says Logan Duran, VP of ESG at Tapestry, who started his career at Coach before returning to the group in 2020 after holding positions at Patagonia and PVH. “In a hyper-connected world, the access to information is even more readily available and people are interested in knowing where and how their products are made, so it’s about making sure we’re able to be really clear and specific and accurate in the data we put out there,” he adds.
A year ago, Tapestry disclosed its Tier 1 factory list (suppliers it deals with directly, such as garment factories), with a breakdown of location and the types of products manufactured in each. This is gradually becoming an industry norm: in 2023, for the first time in Fashion Revolution’s Transparency Index, more than half (52 per cent) of brands disclosed their Tier 1 suppliers. Though this is also just the start.
For Tapestry, the strategic priorities this year are to complete the mapping of its supply chain across all materials (the initial focus was on leather, which represents the biggest share of Tapestry’s material portfolio from a volume, weight and carbon-impact perspective) and gather data from suppliers further upstream. The latter is the biggest challenge, as it’s not just about identifying those partners, but also onboarding them onto the system, running training sessions to help them use the tool and ensuring that all suppliers are interpreting the questions accurately so data is entered in a consistent way.
Onboarding upstream suppliers isn’t easy given the power dynamics that exist across fashion. “The big thing brands are up against when they start this [traceability] journey is the experience that suppliers have had with them up to that point,” says Donna Marshall, professor of supply chain management at University College Dublin. “Suppliers have long memories and the fashion industry has a history of treating them badly — very transactionally and short term, putting lots of the blame onto them. That doesn’t make for a very positive reinforcing network.” In many cases, brands may struggle with maintaining strong relationships across complex and extensive sourcing networks, she says.
Yet gaining the trust of suppliers is vital, says Hrishikesh Rajan, co-founder of TrusTrace, who leads the company’s sales and business development and has been working closely with Tapestry. Right now, companies like Tapestry collect data in a “retroactive manner”, he explains. “The highest level would be to obtain the confidence of suppliers so that they start sharing some of this data at the time of production. So they’d say, ‘I have this much material available and I am adhering to all these [guidelines] even before the product has been made,’” he says. “That is a level of maturity that is probably a six to eight-year journey — brands have been working on traceability for the last 15 years to get there. Tapestry is on their way to get there, but it’s a journey.”
How Tapestry is approaching the task
Asking suppliers to enter data directly into TrusTrace’s system rather than emailing it might reduce workload for Tapestry, but it increases the workload for suppliers while they get used to using and logging the tool. “We have strong relationships with our Tier 1s and 2s [Tier 2 are the suppliers or subcontractors for the Tier 1 suppliers], but when you start moving further upstream, those data requests go through to Tier 3 and 4 and they might not have visibility into who the end brand is, so they may be less inclined to disclose that information,” says Duran.
There’s no quick fix to improving these relationships, he continues. Tapestry organises one-on-one sessions with suppliers, hosts summits for suppliers to gain feedback, and seeks feedback on topics they’d like training sessions on in order to create value for the suppliers. “It’s time-consuming but critical to building those relationships and creating trust to work through any issues that might come in the future, and so they know we’re willing to invest in their capabilities,” Duran says.
Tapestry also has a social labour audit programme, which is based on its supplier code of conduct (covering issues like working hours, health and safety, and building infrastructure). “If we’re seeing particular issues popping up, we’ll develop a specific training programme to upskill those suppliers and reiterate the importance of these topics, as well as ultimately addressing the root cause of these issues and making sure we’re strengthening the relationship,” says Duran.
Rajan of TrusTrace says it’s on the brands to get in touch with Tier 2, 3 or 4 suppliers themselves. “You can’t just outsource it and sit back and hope the data comes in,” he says. “If I call them, they don’t have any context — why is a third-party platform even asking for my data? But if it’s coming from a brand then they know it’s for a specific material or product and could eventually give them more business.”
Marshall agrees that brands looking to build relationships with Tier 2, 3 or 4 suppliers should be hands-on, rather than relying on each supplier to incentivise their own suppliers. She also adds that for training to be effective, it’s important for brands to ensure they’re not being patronising. “Brands think they’re the be-all and end-all, but these suppliers are experts, they have innovation and skills, so being condescending is not the way to do it,” says Marshall. Training should be tailored to the production country, particularly when it comes to the accessibility of technology, she adds.
Along with the ESG team, Tapestry’s vendor compliance, social compliance and technology teams are involved in driving the traceability agenda. “A cross-functional approach is more effective when identifying risks and developing comprehensive strategies to mitigate them,” says Tapestry chief supply chain officer Peter Charles. Duran, who reports to Charles, has regular meetings with the leadership team to review traceability progress, and reports to the board quarterly around ESG more generally.
Tracing the supply chain isn’t the end goal for Tapestry; while the company is still very much in the implementation phase, the ultimate plan is to use traceability to de-risk Tapestry’s supply chain and deliver real impact, Duran says. “The approach that we’re trying to take is laying the foundation for a consistent and systematic infrastructure to quickly be able to respond to data requests so that we can spend the majority of our time on innovative programmes to reduce environmental impact and improve the livelihood of workers.”
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