The Strategy Behind Bossa and Boyish’s Transparency Push
The fashion industry has traditionally been opaque, but that is changing as consumer pressure forces companies to be more open about the origins of their products.
“In my opinion, transparency is certainly a key step to enable sustainability or sustainable action,” said Tai Ford from Retraced. “Transparency offers you proof points, offers you some honesty. It offers and implores you to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk.”
But as brands seek to go beyond greenwashing by showing their work, they can’t do it alone. Unlocking transparency requires collaboration throughout the supply chain.
A webinar hosted by Bossa on Aug. 13 delved into the denim mill’s collaboration with Boyish Jeans on traceability through supply chain transparency solution Retraced. The startup acts as a centralized repository for sustainable information, allowing supply chain partners to more easily collect and manage documentation such as certificates. Almost two years since its launch, Retraced has about 35 brands on its platform.
The partnership between Boyish and Retraced began at Munich Fabric Start, as Boyish Jeans founder Jordan Nordarse was introduced to the Retraced team by Tricia Carey, director of business development at Lenzing. Since then, Boyish has used the blockchain-powered platform to make sustainability reporting more efficient as well as offer more information to consumers.
Sustainability has been a topic at Bossa for almost two decades, but the mill welcomed the opportunity for more traceability within the denim business. “Everybody says they are sustainable, but when comes to transparency, it was a secret,” said Burcu Dalaman Özek from Bossa.
While some companies might be apprehensive about sharing supply chain details for fear of copycat competitors, Jordan is not worried about publicizing his vendors. He pointed out that even if another label chooses to work with the same supplier, the design details, fit and branding cannot be duplicated.
One of the challenges of transparency is getting back to the farm level, since most certification starts at the ginner. Moderator Mohsin Sajid from Endrime shared his experience of talking to a mill that wouldn’t share where its cotton was coming from, saying it was a secret. He chose not to work with them. “If anyone isn’t being transparent, they’ve got something to hide,” he noted.
Aside from environmental issues, there are also potential human rights abuses hidden unseen in these earlier tiers of the supply chain. Compared to industries such as automotive and food producers, fashion is less regulated. By pushing suppliers to trace every aspect of production, companies can weed out bad players that use child labor or slavery.
Boyish has sought out collaborative relationships with its suppliers, and it is also taking a different approach towards sourcing.
“We’ve got to stop using money as the only metric to justify success,” said Jordan. “Obviously, you need to be profitable to be able to run a business, but it needs to be measured in different mentality of the impact that you’re trying to make and directly reflecting that on the marketing atmosphere of it all, and that’s where collaboration comes in.”
Watch the full conversation below on Blue Lenz.