Orta’s Vision for a More Socially Responsible Denim Ecosystem
During the pandemic, the traditional workplace has been upended.
For many corporate employees, Covid has ushered in a switch from working out of offices to working from home. With this shift has come a growing adoption of digital tools to foster collaboration when in-person meetings and travel aren’t possible.
While Covid has facilitated innovation, the crisis has also strained fashion employment in various parts of the supply chain. Roles that couldn’t be accomplished remotely were furloughed, and firms have reshuffled and downsized their teams with layoffs to navigate financial hardships.
During the Conscious Fashion Campaign’s Discover the SDGs educational series this month, Turkish denim mill Orta’s director of sales, marketing, R&D and product development Sedef Uncu Aki will be joining a panel about the future of work in the apparel industry.
Carved in Blue caught up with Orta to discuss how the company is navigating the new normal and the true cost of denim.
Carved in Blue: For Orta, what is the significance of SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth? How have you addressed this goal in your operations in recent years?
Orta: According to World Bank numbers, the fashion industry is key for economic development, directly employing 75 million people throughout its value chain and the world’s third largest manufacturing sector after the automobile and technology industries. Not only its economic value, but both its negative and positive impacts on environment and on societies are also extremely important and affecting. And as Orta, we may look like a small portion of this 75 million people with our 1,000-plus family numbers, but we believe that all of our decisions/acts on social, environmental and financial subjects has an impact.
Orta has always been behind the idea of the true cost of denim does not come from the materials or resources that we put in our products but also comes from the impact we make on both natural and social environment. That is why while working on continuous improvement on our HR policies and operations, we also work on supporting our value chain towards better good.
At Orta, we believe our employees are our greatest assets. Since the beginning, all Orta family members have had right to form and join unions of their choice and bargain collectively. We respect the right to work in a healthy and safe environment of every Orta member and do not tolerate any form of forced, hazardous, compulsory, bonded or child labor, any kind of discrimination or other unethical employment practices. With the pandemic, we realized that we are committed more than ever to the health and welfare of our Orta family of workers, our brand partners and retailers, and to the Earth that sustains us.
We greatly support local production and therefore give great importance to source not only materials but also services locally for a more sustainable community. We work with both customers and suppliers that share our vision on both environmental and social subjects. And our traceability hence transparency policy is also based on that vision and the long-term business relationships that we established with both parties.
We are located at the intersection of many cultural and trading routes, and Orta’s Denim Route of manufacturing with global connectivity today is built on the roots of our home, Anatolia, Turkey, which has been the bridge between the East and the West trading routes, part of the original Silk Road that opened the world to the trade of goods and services in the 19th century. And today, we are committed to carry this route, carrying knowledge and mastery heritage to the present, from agricultural changes to the variety of production methods for a better future for denim.
The period that we currently live in showed us that we are in this together and we as an industry must come together to help each other sustain and thrive, as we have an interconnected value chain. At Orta, our brand partners and retailers are our collaborators, and together we will co-create a new denim ecosystem that works for each of us and for the greater industry.
Carved in Blue: How has the pandemic disrupted employment within the fashion industry? From your perspective, what is the outlook for workers within the apparel sector?
Orta: As a hands-on and visual industry, the whole fashion industry—starting from the cotton farmers to chemical manufacturers, mills, garment manufacturers to brands and retailers—are affected by the pandemic that is mainly spread by contact. The fashion supply chain had to fight against this pandemic in addition to pressure on delivery times, prices and sustainability issues. With the fast actions taken by the brands and retailers to skip seasons or reducing, canceling and/or postponing orders had huge impact on the supply chain and caused some manufacturers to shrink their sizes and even close down their production, which affected the financial well-being of workers within the sector negatively. And now, with the world being more adjusted to the new normal, the new ways of producing, communicating and shopping trends help the industry come to life again. But this time, we realized that we cannot continue our conventional methods and the ways we do our businesses. Today, flexible planning and production, close procurement, flexibility and autonomy of businesses are expected to be the key factors in transformation of the global apparel industry into the new normal. This will of course open new horizons for the disruptive thinkers and innovators, but for the non-adaptive businesses, another crisis after Covid seems inevitable.
Carved in Blue: What has Orta done to support its own employees during the pandemic?
Orta: Before even we faced Covid cases in Turkey, the first step taken by Orta was to cancel all travel arrangements and visits to and from our mill and offices to minimize risks of contact and increase health and safety measures. After a short period of full lockdown, we transitioned from partial production to full slowly and safely. The health and safety of our family members being our priority, we are now working fully in our mill and our office workers work remotely.
Carved in Blue: How is Orta adjusting to the new normal? What solutions have you found for facilitating remote collaboration as travel restrictions remain?
Orta: We see this pandemic as a global reset to stop and look our day-to-day operations, the business as usual practices and their consequences.
Denim, what we do is a hands-on and visual business. We need to touch, feel, look under different lights and stretch the fabric. In traditional marketing and sales, we were producing so many washes and garments and samples, which would end up in garbage or lost in the chain. Plus, we needed to travel all around the world by car or plane to sell them, creating an immense footprint. When you think the amount of fiber, chemical, energy, water and work put on these samples, it is just huge. And this pandemic, being on lockdown brought the need of digitalization really fast. We changed from real meetings to online ones in one day, even in hours, so it really pushed us to be more digitalized.
Designed to engage Orta’s denim brand partners with the eco-smart concepts, our kit is digitally integrated for a seamless online and offline experience that delivers a heightened sense of touch—emotional, social and physical—in today’s extraordinary business climate and contactless social interactions. The Here4Good kit also introduces Orta’s new members-only website, where partners can access inspirational trends, innovation insights, environmental impact assessment and high-definition visual assets for the collection.
The kit is created in a modular form consisting of six different boxes, one for each concept and the main collection narrative. Playful and thoughtful, the kit immerses you in the collection’s eco-smart innovation that speaks to the demands of today’s waste-free, climate action generation, from its new industry-leading hemp fabric to dyes made from food waste.
Each box on the kit has QR codes that provide access to the new Orta Gallery website for more detailed information on the concepts. In addition to concept stories, the Here4Good collection is elaborated with emerging trends, innovations and communication tools for Orta Gallery users. A special photoshoot was organized for this new website in order to get close-up and high-resolution fabric photos. Orta customers can access this members-only website with their unique user names and experience our collection journey via Orta Gallery.
The exterior of the box has a QR code directly linked to the overall concept narrative, with visuals and videos. With the fabric swatches inside the boxes, users can experience the fabric shades and characters for different wash levels from raw to high bleached. Fabric swatch cards include two QR codes: One directs you to the wash gallery with high resolution garment photos and fabric information, and the other QR code on the back of the swatch represents Orta’s unique QR code for the environmental impact of each fabric based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data, from raw material production to its end of life. The LCA tool helps Orta collect, analyze and monitor the sustainability performance of each of its products, which we have been using for the last three years now.
Keeping with our commitment to minimize waste and increase digitalization, we regenerated our Here4Good collection kit for our new collection Deeply Rooted. And with this collection, in addition to LCA data with the QR codes we added fiber origin information to open up a new chapter in our transparency pledge.
In addition to our digitalization efforts, we increased our presence in our social media accounts and online trade shows, discussions and other digital platforms to be more connected with our stakeholders more than ever.
In line with our transparency pledge, “Orta is Always Open,” we are now getting ready to open up the human touch factor of our operations. We continue to engage every member of the Orta family to contribute to Orta’s sustainability journey. We are believing in real-time transparency. Our team members from the Kayseri factory, headquarters in Istanbul, and those still working from home will share their stories via recordings. And this will be on our Ortablu platform (Ortablu.org) soon.
Hear more from Orta during Discover the SDGs, on now through Dec. 30.