Ethical Clothing Manufacturers for Responsible Fashion Brands

When selecting ethical clothing manufacturers, it is not enough to simply find a factory which produces using organic cotton or recycled polyester. Ethical apparel manufacturing encompasses working conditions, wages, health and safety at work, environmental management, supply chain transparency and branding.

That‘s one reason why the issues surrounding ethical manufacturing are so much bigger than simply picking the right fabric. An ethical clothing brand has to examine the suppliers and factory workers involved in making its clothes, and a company‘s documentation.

Ethical Manufacturing Starts With People

The workers are at the heart of ethical clothing. The factory must provide a healthy and safe environment; reasonable working hours; dignity and respect; and employment according to the law.

Fair wear takes into account 8 categories and those are absence of forced labor, absence of discrimination, freedom of choice, prohibition of child labor, freedom of association, decent living wages, reasonable hours, safe and hygienic working conditions and legal terms of employment.

These principles provide good guidelines for the brand when choosing a new supplier; rather than only questioning how garments are produced, they should also inquire about the factory‘s treatment of its employees.

Do Not Judge a Factory From a Sustainability Claim

By using…words, companies may be trying to mask a complex process that can’t be summed up in a quick slogan or a marketing term. Words like sustainable, responsible, eco-friendly…these terms alone don’t provide information about how a factory is treating their workers or tackling pollution.

Certification can give us stronger proof but buyers also have to understand what each certification is about.

GOTS, for instance, has specifications for organic materials, processing, environmental management, social standards, transparency, and labelling within its scope of certification. Its public supplier database enables users to search for certified suppliers based on location, operation, and product group.

Therefore, request the real certificate and verify the scope of the certificate instead of a logo or a sentence on a supplier‘s website.

Certification Has a Specific Purpose

Different standards seek to address different questions.

GOTS deals with the organic textiles and processing chain of the certification system. Fair Trade USA has a Fair Trade Factory Program, where responsible sourcing and workers’ livelihoods are addressed. The program includes now more than 100 certified factories in the world.

In contrast, Fair Wear concentrates (like WT) on human rights due diligence and long-term improvements of garment supply chains, as opposed to categorizing individual manufacturers or products. Clearly, Fair Wear does not provide a list of recommended suppliers:

Knowing what these differences are will help brands not treat each label as if it confirms the same thing.

Factory Transparency Matters

It makes shopping for clothes more transparent for the buyer.

Inquire at the source of production with the producer of the item where is the factory located, what company is doing cutting and sewing, where is the fabric produced and what external companies are doing printing, washing, embroidery, dyeing or finishing.

The factory will probably control the sewing in-house with a number of other processes contracted out to other suppliers. These sub-suppliers can also impact on your ethical sourcing policies.

Supply chain map thus really gets to matters. The better you knowledge of each stage of production, easier to identify risks.

Factory Audits Tell Only Part of the Story

Audits may help in pin point areas for concerns, but one audit should not straddle an everything ethical sourcing strategy.

Working conditions are dynamic. There will be more pressure to produce during busy periods. New subcontractors might be involved in the supply chain. Worker complains could be hidden during a short period of inspection.

Fair Wear standards add further to human rights due diligence, stakeholder consultation, responsible buying practices and remedy on the line. Their strategy is based on the presumption that factories, brands and workers are all share responsibilities for improving working conditions.

For brands, this means that ethical sourcing isn‘t a one-time compliance check but rather something to continually work on.

Your Purchasing Decisions Affect Factory Conditions

The way in which brands behave can have an impact on the working conditions of factories more than many buyers would ever imagine.

Unpredictable modifications, fixed delivery times, abrupt order terminatings or bargaining salary with alacritous offer details all exerts pressure on the supply chain. A factory would find it hard to keep stable working environment if buyers keep modifying produce specifications.

Fair Wear explicitly mentions fair sourcing and responsible contracting within the category of improving working conditions.

Thus, a responsible brand should look at its purchasing practices, as well as its supplier‘s policies, in the same time.

Material Choices Still Matter

Is ethical manufacturing taking into consideration the harmful effects on the environment?

In terms of material claims, organic cotton, recycled fibers, lower-impact processing, responsible chemical management and better traceability could all lead to a more responsible clothing supply chain. However, these must be corroborated.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDGA) textiles may claim for certain organic claims if certain criteria are met, and offers a different certification process called GOTS for the certification of organic textiles to its own standard.

Consequently, brands could question precisely what share of an item is made of claimed material, through which certification and at what points throughout the supply chain is that certification valid.

Smaller Brands Can Still Ask Difficult Questions

Sustainable sourcing is not just for major fashion brands.

A minor brand may not have many compliance agents, while still being able to request from a manufacturer fundamental data on working conditions, the factory ownership, where the products have been produced, if they were subcontracted, certifications, and records related to environment issues.

The productivity scale can also favor more straightforward messages. Instead of blanketing potential factories with a lengthy corporate survey, a young brand can simply see the producer face to face and ask for proof of key assertions.

The goal should not involve making paperwork just for the mere fact of creating paperwork. The goal is related to how the process actually functions.

Choose Evidence Over Impressive Language

Developed a utility of evidence based checklist when judging suppliers of design modifications.

Look for:

• Current certificates and their scope
• Factory location and ownership data
• Worker health and safety practices. You could include in this categories; policies or procedures tailored to meet health and safety needs. And/or (specific to setting) whether worker health and safety practices are afforded the same priority as quality assurance efforts and the program has a plan in place to address the health and safety of all providers.
• As regards employment and wages. Has a positive impact on employment for low-paid workers (particularly women).
• Subcontracting arrangements
• Material traceability
• Environmental management
• Chemical management
• Production records
• These are the steps of a quality control process.
• Correction processes In general, the process for a corrective action involves the following steps (metto, 2004): detection and isolation of the problem, analysis of the underlying cause, implementation of a solution, follow-up procedures, and verification of effectiveness and documentation.
• Communication concerning employee issues

Another valuable company to remember when researching suppliers is CFDA. Its Production Directory links buyers to more than 380 United States apparel factories, although it notes “CFDA does not conduct any audits, certifications or facility monitoring of the U.S. manufacturers” listed.

This rules comfortably of course and with equally comfortable application elsewhere.

Ethical Production Should Support Long-Term Relationships

But having a longer-term relationship with the supplier can also provide a better environment for improvement.

A brand providing a factory with stable orders, realistic time frames, accurate forecasts, and clearly defined product specifications takes load off the factory and allows it to plan production and employment appropriately.

Short term chases of prices on the other hand might result in quite a different story. The a change from one factory to another might discourage long term brands trying to clarify working conditions and/or build a worthwhile improvement programs.

Because improvement takes time and depends on cooperation along the entire supply chain, the Fair Wear model is based on long-term relationships between brands, suppliers, workers and other stakeholders.

What Ethical Clothing Manufacturers Should Offer

Is that the right manufacturer have to claim perfection. Factory should to be very honesty with factory‘s capability, limitation, productions, place, certificates and plan for the improvement.

JiuvelWear adopts a product oriented model to cater to apparel manufacturing, Dongguan Jiuzuo Clothing Co., Ltd assists fashion brands with fabric procurement, sample development, apparel production, checking and quality control.

For brands that are committed to an ethical manufacturing, give the manufacturer‘s selection process a check against evidence. Audit the factory, question the documentation, find the supply chain, contact the workers and scrutinise the standards behind each certification.

An ethically produced piece of clothing can‘t just be determined by the label you find it under. It is in fact determined by the process in which we, the people, we, the material, the market place factory, you and I, work through the whole process.