It’s been a while…

But don’t worry we have been very busy! Not least with delivering babies, doing countless ethical audits across the world, and learning something about the way consumers think about ethical trade. 

A consumer survey was published last week which found that many consumers do not believe fashion retailers’ claims on ethical sourcing. It also stated that the most important issue to consumers was whether or not there were underage or child workers making the products that they were buying. 

The study, published by TNS Worldpanel Fashion, asked 7,000 people about the ethical credentials claimed by UK retailers. 45% said that they were sceptical. It suggested that older buyers (over 55) were more interested in ethical claims than those under the age of 25.

Our own experience shows that customers are pleasantly surprised to hear how much work certain fashion retailers are doing on ethics. More people are checking the labels for information. More people are becoming more discriminating in which claims they choose to believe.

Here at Impactt we welcome increased consumer interest. We welcome the exposes and the media coverage, but it would be great if retailers, brands, NGOs, unions and journalists could report more credible good news stories to customers – more stories to show that by working hard on these issues we can all make a difference to the lives of the people making the stuff we buy.

Ambitious new Nike Corporate Responsibility Report

 Nike has in the past few days (May 31, 2007) released their Corporate Responsibility report. The section dealing with ‘Workers in Contract factories’ makes interesting reading. It starts by acknowledging that the 800,000 workers in their supply chain overshadow any other direct constituency; that 80% of these workers are women aged between 18 and 24 and  they are themselves significant agents of change for their wider communities.Nike has set themselves some very ambitious targets. They state they want to bring systemic change for workers’ rights in their supply chain and in the industry at large. In particular, by 2011 they intend to:

• Eliminate excessive overtime in their contract factories
• Implement tailored human resource management systems and educational training for workers in their focus factories
• Implement Freedom of Association Educational programmes in 100 percent of focus factories
• And lead multi-brand collaboration on compliance issues in 30 percent of their supply chain

Nike describe how their programme has gone through three iterations. Generation I and II were about standards and monitoring, Generation III they argue is about ‘responsible competitiveness’, identifying and remediating root causes with systemic approaches.  Specifically it focuses on:

• Building excellence in factory remediation
• Developing sustainable sourcing strategies
• Building business integration and accountability
• Increasing contract factory ownership of corporate responsibility
• Building industry coalitions

Nike used to be synonymous with sweatshops. They are now, along with the GAP, widely acknowledged within the ethical trade community as having the leading and most well resourced ethical trading programmes of all companies. That’s not to say they haven’t got problems. No companies can guarantee that their supply chains are problem free. After all this is about human relationships and about 800,000 young women in very poor countries. 

Nike argues that most people in ethical trade have become experts in rooting out the bad, but the real challenge is in outlining and delivering a vision of success.

One could quibble about whether all ethical traders are finding the problems in their supply chains, however Nike are right about the need for successful visions. Nike should be applauded for setting themselves such ambitious goals. But the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.