Retailer asks brand partners with a UK manufacturing presence to sign up to the Transparency Pledge.
Asos is calling on its brand partners with a UK manufacturing presence to strengthen their commitment to transparency and responsible action.
The retailer is asking third party brands – which accounted for 60% of the products sold on Asos in the last financial year – to pledge to make four new ethical manufacturing commitments as a condition to their products being sold on the website, reported Fashion United.
The Transparency Pledge requires businesses to publicly and regularly declare their manufacturing supply chain, joining other fashion companies including Asos, H&M, Inditex, Next and Pentland Brands.
The brands will also have to map and have visibility on all parts of their UK garment manufacturing supply chain (and provide evidence of this to Asos), as well as identify risks within their supply base and strategies to mitigate this.
Finally, they will be asked to join Fast Forward, the UK-focused supply chain labour standards auditing methodology which Asos co-founded with other retailers in 2014 to tackle issues facing UK garment manufacturing.
“When we launched our third-party brand engagement programme at the start of 2018, we set out Five Minimum Requirements that we wanted the brands we sold on-site to sign up to by 2020,” said Nick Beighton, chief executive at Asos. “We’ve been working hard to support our brand partners to achieve this aim, and with the target now insight, we want to be even more ambitious – and ask those brands that manufacture in the UK to bring their supply chains in line with our own, if they are not already.”
Asos also confirmed that it has plans to roll out similar initiatives internationally over the coming months.
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