A Frictionless Plan: Stitching Sustainable Practices Into the Fashion & Retail Supply Chain

The fashion industry has never been watched more closely than now. Brands have been called out repeatedly for not being transparent about their decision-making and supply chain processes. At the beginning of the year, Forbes called out brands for prioritising profits over ethical supply chains, and this rhetoric has been echoed by the likes of Diet Prada and McKinsey. This has fuelled a movement to implement transparent processes, and sustainable decision-making across the fashion industry through digitalisation. 

H&M Group has been a leader of this movement with their decision to actually show the supply chain on Arket clothing labels and their commitment to Responsible purchasing practices. They’ve identified these practices as important to safeguard the fair treatment of garment workers and ensure healthy work environments. They have pinpointed “adequate planning and responsible planning” as two major factors in facilitating their ability to uphold their commitment. 

The social responsibility that fashion and retail companies have to uphold ethical and environmental standards demands scrutiny of supply chains and decisions made during the sourcing process. Axel Arigato’s Corporate Responsibility statement is a good example of how to permeate the chain; from Suppliers, Production, Materials and Packaging, with ethical and environmental best practices. 

DeepStream can support these companies who are willing to make and demonstrate commitments to these goals, without compromising Supplier relationships.

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The question is how - and we have the answer

There are a number of ways in which DeepStream supports companies embedding sustainability into their processes. One of those is DeepStream’s Audit trail that logs all events that take place on a request - in real-time. Whether this is revisions to prices of Line items, updating shared documents or any communication with Suppliers, the Audit trail keeps track of it all so Buyers don’t have to. This means that everything that takes place during the buying process is transparent, and empowers companies committed to transparency across the supply chain to hold themselves accountable. For the fashion industry, this means that all sourcing can be done in an open manner, giving visibility internally and externally if they choose, to how they are sourcing, and who they are sourcing from. 

Furthermore, our software’s Evaluation module allows companies to demonstrate their commitment to ethical and sustainable sourcing by including it as a criteria. The flexibility of DeepStream allows for our partners to enter whatever criteria they would like to evaluate their Suppliers, and make decisions. This is a prime opportunity for companies to include sustainability, factory wages, and locality in how they decide who they decide to allocate bids to. Again, the Audit trail logs this, ensuring transparency across the Evaluation process as well. This paves the way for your company to choose sustainability. 

DeepStream also streamlines all communication with Suppliers, moving it from emails and opaque ways of working to the platform in an easily accessible and intuitive way. This helps to maintain and foster existing Supplier relationships, who are able to sign up to the platform free of charge, invite as many users as they’d like, and have access to our Customer Success team at no additional cost. As all you need to sign up to DeepStream is a working browser and internet connection, ensuring that there are no discriminatory barriers to Suppliers accessing the platform or tenders they are invited to participate in.

With flexible and collaborative procurement software, you can make transparent decisions that support commitments to ethical and environmental sustainability. Software that allows for visibility across teams, makes auditing easy, and facilitates Supplier communication, ultimately allows companies to make smarter and more transparent decisions better and more efficiently.  

We are committed to supporting companies in making transparent, ethical and sustainable decisions, whatever the industry - and with partners ranging from Maersk, Xos Trucks, Altera Infrastructure, leading gigafactories and renewable energy - we really mean that. This is why we ensure the workflows for Buyers can be tailored to their needs, why our product roadmap is dictated by our users feedback, and why we offer our white glove Customer Success care and new features for free to our Partners. 

We are here to empower you to make smarter and transparent decisions easier.

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