Should the social and environmental damage of the fashion and footwear industry continue expanding unabated, says Anja Sadock, SVP of TrusTrace, the world would descend into even worse trouble than it already has. But, if the industry works together on a transformational model with transparency at its core – and then that model gets emulated in other industries – that will go a long way toward reversing the detrimental trends of business as usual.
Transparency is what TrusTrace is all about. Founded in 2016 in Stockholm, with offices in India, Germany, France, and the US, the B2B “impact-tech SaaS” is the world’s leading traceability and compliance data platform for fashion and footwear brands. Those include its customer, the materiality company, Tapestry, which provides resources and makes products for global fashion brands such as Kate Spade, COACH, and Stuart Weitzman.
TrusTrace’s mission is to empower companies like Tapestry with “the data to know, prove, and improve the impact of their value chains,” says Sadock, and that’s what first appealed to Logan T. Duran, Senior Director of ESG & Sustainability at Tapestry. “I went to school [at Columbia U.] for Environmental Science and Geology. And the goal was always, how do [I] work with a company to help them measure, find solutions, and introduce those solutions to reduce environmental impact?” Duran found his way to COACH, “knowing nothing about fashion,” where he built out its sustainability program.
Duran left after several years for a five-year stint at Patagonia, “a master class in responsible business.” When Tapestry re-recruited him, he insisted on a more team-based approach to revolutionizing the company. “I said, we’re not doing this as a one-man band. That is not what this problem needs. We’ve got to be willing to invest and grow the team and put some real resources behind it. And thankfully they said, ‘Yeah, we agree.’”
Capitalizing on TrusTrace’s extensive asset library of sustainable, scalable resources, Duran has led Tapestry’s sustainability-foundation-building program for five years. “Tapestry sets the table,” says Duran, “then leverages out [the programming] to all of its brands. We have a shared supply chain, we have a shared function. We’re the center of excellence for the brands. [We provide] consistency of measurement, consistency of policy.”
But, Sadock agrees with Duran that, “ultimately it’s up to the [individual] brands [throughout the enterprise] to then bring that to life in their own messaging, their marketing, their communication. But we at least can create consistency in how we approach it all.”
Consistency throughout the enterprise internally—plus new industrywide consistency caused by evolving standards and regulations shared by TrusTrace’s clients such as Adidas, Asics, Brooks, and others among its loyal customers.
TrusTrace’s cloud-based web platform for sustainability is the central hub for much of those companies’ work to measure, manage, and maximize the utility of collated supply chain impact data. Those companies and Tapestry have hit on the primary advantage of TrusTrace’s value, which is to partner with one comprehensive system for consistent traceability—versus trying to shoehorn a range of tools from different sources that solve specific problems that challenge fashion and footwear, such as compliance with various regional reporting requirements.
Sadock argues that TrusTrace’s “very pro-regulation” stance in its industry makes perfect sense. Such increased scrutiny and tighter regulation is “obviously needed, I think voluntarily,” she says. “But, it hasn’t happened automatically.” So, the playing field has not been level. “There are brands that are doing the right thing. There are suppliers that are doing the right thing, but they’re not getting rewarded today. And even worse, bad behavior isn’t really getting penalized. So, the true cost of products is not reflected in the price” across the board. This potentially encourages further degradation of the climate and social fabric.
New regulation “is absolutely needed, and it’s great that it’s coming,” says Sadock, who’s been TrusTrace SVP since 2021. “Of course, we needed it fifteen years ago … and it needs to be practically implementable because otherwise it just becomes this paralysis where people don’t do anything because it’s all too much.” That’s where TrusTrace’s various traceability modules come in.
For a global company like Tapestry, which aims to increase its use of innovative materials, and focus on new production methods that “design out” waste and pollution, as well as keep products in use for longer, and restore the dominance of natural systems, says Duran, a partner like TrusTrace is essential.
“We have validated science-based targets,” says Duran. “We have commitments to traceability, commitments to the adoption of preferred material. And we look at the partnership and engagement with TrusTrace as a solution to enable a lot of that work.”
For example, Duran argues, “You can’t show or prove that you’ve reduced emissions in your supply chain if you don’t actually know where emissions are being generated in your supply chain. You can’t prove or message to consumers the benefit of an environmentally-preferred material if you can’t also collect the documents and track transaction certificates in the solution, to then have the confidence and the substantiation to then message and communicate those environmental benefits.”
In short, it’s increasingly necessary and increasingly complicated. A company cannot be expected to know – no less execute – all the intricacies of data collection and mining, regulation, compliance, consistency, etc., even by employing a world-class sustainability crew and giving them a giant budget.
To succeed in this new world of multiple degrees of circularity and the new gen CSR programs such as Tapestry’s Social Fabric ESG strategy, a company needs to collaborate with a traceability partner that’s an expert in their industry. To meet enterprise-wide sustainability commitments and goals, and help them align with myriad new regulatory requirements and constantly evolving industry best practices – not to mention rapidly iterating consumer expectations – such assistance is no longer just nice to have—it’s a requirement, Sadock and Duran argue. This new era of circularity and regenerative economics will perforce become an age of pre-competitive collaboration.
Says Sadock, “It’s all about where you can collaborate. Because if you’re thinking about sorting out supply chains, decarbonizing supply chains, eliminating forced labor from supply chains, a company such as Tapestry can’t do that alone, no matter how good they are, because they’re sharing supply chains with a lot of other brands. So how can you see, how can you define where you can work together? Where do you have joint suppliers? How can you unlock financing for decarbonizing certain parts of the supply chain? That’s how we see that we can help: connecting the brands, like looking at the data at a more structural level.”
Where is TrusTrace going next? “We’re looking at getting much more into sustainable supply chain finance,” says Sadock. “Helping institutions like banks see” the wisdom “in investing to help suppliers change.”