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Fashion companies need visibility on their supply chain to drive successful sustainability initiatives.

This visibility lays the foundation for two essential factors in a sustainable supply chain:

•  Transparency—disclosing standardized information to enable comparison—is about trust
• Traceability—ability to discover information about how and when a product is made—is about accountability. The two together will be powerful drivers of change in the industry.

Sustainability has been a hot button issue in the fashion industry for years, with fashion companies around the world vying to prove their green credentials. As consumers become more conscious of the power of their purchasing decisions and the list of environmental laws and regulations gets longer, fashion companies need visibility on their supply chain to drive successful sustainability initiatives.

Transparency and traceability

This visibility lays the foundation for two essential factors in a sustainable supply chain: transparency and traceability. Transparency--disclosing standardized information to enable comparison--is about trust; traceability—ability to discover information about how and when a product is made—is about accountability. The two together will be powerful drivers of change in the industry.

The launch of the Higg Index illustrates the importance with which the industry takes calls for transparency and traceability. However, collecting and centralizing the information used in the Higg Index is no easy task when a company uses Excel sheets, emails and other IT systems to communicate and compile information.

This is where PLM comes in. Fashion PLM softwares provide fashion and apparel companies with transparency and traceability across all stakeholders and on a global network. With a fashion PLM platform, fashion’s barely traceable supply chain gives way to one of radical transparency.  

Tracking ethical and environmental compliance and certifications across departments, products and teams with a fashion PLM Platform

Companies can adapt their supply chain in alignment with their sustainability goals by tracking ethical and environmental compliance and certifications across departments, products and teams. Not only are companies certain to select sustainable suppliers but they can also improve communication, thereby ensuring greater efficiency and more predictable timelines.

Traceability across the supply chain is a prerequisite for true understanding and eventual improvement of a company’s environmental impact. A PLM platform can serve as a transparency-enabling system that not only helps to ensure ethical and environment compliance throughout the production process but also helps profit margins by reducing overproduction and inventory loss.

Sustainability has been a hot button issue in the fashion industry for years, with fashion companies around the world vying to prove their green credentials. From relatively small, unknown designers to big-name luxury brands, increasingly eco-conscious consumers as well as international regulations and laws are driving fashion and apparel companies to launch new sustainability initiatives, share more information and set new goals.

Against a backdrop of new corporate social responsibility (CSR) challenges and a growing list of environmental laws and regulations, it is essential that fashion and apparel companies gain visibility over their end-to-end product lifecycle processes. The creation of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) and development of the Higg Index have been the industry’s most concrete steps towards achieving the environmental and social transparency consumers are calling for. Technology will play a significant role in helping the fashion industry achieve its loftiest sustainability goals, and product lifecycle management (PLM) software is one of the technologies that will help fashion brands and manufacturers drive successful sustainability initiatives.

Not only can companies use the data collected and compiled in their PLM system for sustainability reports but it can also be used as a part of consumer storytelling.

As Kathleen Talbot from Reformation stated, “The brands that are standing out are those who don’t just publish massive endof-year reports, but those who have integrated their messaging into the customer experience and journey.”10 Communicating on your sustainability journey can inspire consumer confidence and drive deeper engagement with your brand or store.

Companies can truly manage the entire product lifecycle, from development to sale, with just one solution

An adaptable solution that integrates product information management (PIM) capabilities makes this task much easier for fashion and apparel companies. A solution with PLM and PIM capabilities allows companies to handle almost 100% of its collection data in one spot, given that 35% of the data managed by a PLM solution is used in PIM and 70% of PIM data comes from the PLM. These PIM capabilities can be a powerful tool to structure and contextualize your product information in relation to your company’s sustainability efforts on all your sales and social media channels.