Ethical Fashion Practices: How to Become an Ethical Retailer
Implementing ethical fashion practices is challenging, but the benefits are endless.
Adopting an ethical approach to fashion retail encourages consumer behaviour that results in enhanced brand loyalty, reduced environmental impact, and increased trust.
This extended step-by-step guide will provide you with real-life examples and actions that can help you on your way to becoming an ethical fashion retailer. We offer practical advice on how your brand can start building a responsible, transparent, and sustainable fashion company in line with consumer values. By implementing these strategies, you will not only enhance your brand’s reputation but also contribute positively to the fashion industry’s shift toward sustainability.
Understanding the Ethical Fashion Practices
To become an ethical fashion retailer, you must first understand what ethical fashion practices entail.
Ethical fashion considers several ethical aspects from fair labour practices to environmental sustainability and transparency.
- Living Wages: Ensuring workers are paid a fair wage that allows them to meet their basic needs and support their families.
- Safe Working Conditions: Providing safe and healthy working environments, free from hazards and excessive hours.
- Ethical Recruitment: Avoiding forced labour, child labour, and discriminatory hiring practices.
- Sustainable Practices and Materials: Using eco-friendly materials like organic cotton, recycled polyester, and natural fibres. Reduce waste and use sustainable packaging, limiting the use of harmful chemicals in dyeing and finishing processes and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Supply Chain Transparency and Traceability: Disclosing information about the origin of materials, manufacturing processes, and worker conditions. Ensure you can track the journey of a garment from raw materials to the final product.
How to Become an Ethical Clothing Retailer
In a consumer-driven society where people feel compelled to keep up with the latest trends, fast fashion has become a popular choice, offering affordable options for those with limited financial resources.
However, a growing counter-trend has been emerging, with shoppers becoming increasingly conscious and responsible consumers. As regulations on ethical and sustainable practices tighten, retailers must take action to remain competitive and relevant
From the impact on the environment to human rights, retailers bear significant responsibility for their communities. That’s why they need to implement ethical practices as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility strategy.
Here are some guidelines on where to start:
- Identify and Outline Your Values
- Conduct Thorough Research
- Source Ethically and Consider Local Sourcing
- Reduce Overproduction and Overstocking
- Implement a Transparent Supply Chain
- Consider Ethical Certifications and Labeling
Identify and Outline Your Values
Each ethical clothing retailer is built on a base of guiding principles. The first and most important step toward ethical transformation is defining what you stand for as a fashion retailer. Does your brand prioritise fair labour practices, positive environmental impact, or even animal welfare? While each of these areas has its own set of best practices, they also come with unique challenges, and identifying which ones are most in line with your brand’s mission is key.
Central to constructing an ethical brand is determining clear values that start from the top of your company and trickle down into every corner. Some of this means teaching your team to live by those values as well. For example, Mango, through its commitment to sustainability, is training more than 250 employees on such sustainable practices. This initiative ensures that all employees, regardless of area or hierarchical level within the organisation, understand the need to strive for sustainability results and, in this way, consolidate a global corporate culture with clear values focused on people and the planet.
As an example, Patagonia, which has long been recognised for its dedication to environmental stewardship and as a sustainable clothing brand, built its reputation on the idea of not creating anything that it considers as “unnecessary harm” to the earth. That clear ethical stance informs every decision the brand makes, from what kind of materials it uses to which labour practices are supported. Likewise, Stella McCartney is a big name attached to vegan and cruelty-free fashion where no material derived from an animal finds its way into her designs.
Rule of thumb: once you have determined the ethical values that are irreplaceable for your brand, draw up an in-house code defining what is and isn’t acceptable across sourcing, production, and labour. This will not only help guide internal decisions but also provide a benchmark that customers and stakeholders can trust.
Assess and Evaluate Your Suppliers
Ethical fashion retailers must carefully select their suppliers and business partners based on whether or not they share the same ethical and sustainable principles. This research encompasses a few elements, some of which are:
- Labour Rights: Are workers who are making your clothes paid their due and treated with dignity? Brands such as Everlane have promised full disclosure; their policy is to inform their customers about their partners, factories, and what goes on within them.
- Environmental management: How environmentally friendly are your suppliers? Do they source sustainable raw materials and employ responsible manufacturing practices? One of the companies that focuses on organic fibres and recycled materials to lessen the environmental impact of their collections is Eileen Fisher.
- Animal welfare: If you use animal products, are they cruelty-free, ethically sourced, and support the welfare of animals? As a real revolution along animal-friendly high fashion lines, Gucci stands out with their luxury leather label going fur-free.
- Regulatory Awareness and Certifications: Another important issue to keep in mind when transitioning to ethical fashion or sustainable retail, in general, is ensuring your suppliers are certified and compliant with industry standards. These include certifications such as Fair Trade or GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard), which guarantee fair wages and good working conditions. Staying informed about relevant regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is crucial to ensuring your brand remains compliant with evolving legislation while also meeting the growing demands for responsible consumer practices.
Source Ethically and Consider Local Sourcing
An ethical approach to sourcing is at the heart of any ethical fashion brand, and when it comes down to choosing suppliers, they need to do the same things you do, be it ethical standards or fair labour practices.
Sourcing materials closer to home adds value to perception when it comes to ethical fashion brands. Local supply chains produce multiple benefits; they dramatically lower your carbon impact by shortening the shipping distance. One great example is London-based brand People Tree, which focuses heavily on ethical production and works tirelessly with Fair Trade producers. They not only guarantee organic cotton use but also local partnerships. This helps with job sustainability within the UK, and it also offers greater control over their supply chain.
In addition, local sourcing results in higher engagement with small (and often more ethical) suppliers and less likelihood of exploitation at the hands of workers or harm to the environment across long global opaque supply chains. The reality is that more and more consumers are looking at products that strengthen their local area while having a lower environmental footprint.
Reduce Overproduction and Overstocking
The environmental impact of fast fashion is massive. Fast fashion brands often create more products than needed, resulting in stockpiles of airborne waste when the items that are not sold end up burnt. One means of combating this is for responsible retailers to adopt algorithmic production processes that will align supply with demand, thereby simultaneously minimising waste while reducing the environmental damage from reliance on fast-moving fashion.
Ethical fashion brands need to know where their products sell best and have to be armed with consumer insights, sales data, and predictive modelling technology. This allows for more precise and structured production plans. Such an approach helps in creating the exact amount of goods as per immediate demand, thereby decreasing wastage. Rapanui is a UK sustainable fashion brand that employs data in the production of its items. To further combat excess inventory and eliminate waste, they make use of a “made-to-order” model, meaning that each item is produced only once an order has been placed.
By utilising sizing technology provided by Makip, Batch LDN is now able to offer accurate sizings as part of its referendum. Through utilising this technology, Batch LDN can guarantee that customers are sent clothes that fit exactly as they should resulting in reducing the return rate and negating overproduction of garments. This frees up brands to produce just the stock they need, reducing overstock and landfill waste.
Another useful method is production on demand, where products are manufactured only once they have been sold. Luxury fashion designers, including MaisonCléo, employ this model in order to generate zero waste and produce each item of clothing according to the customer’s exact measurements, thus increasing its value while making it more sustainable.
Implement a Transparent Supply Chain
Full consumer trust in ethical fashion comes through being completely transparent. In other words, retailers must have full visibility into every layer of their supply chain, from the origination of raw materials to the finished product and avoid bluewashing. Transparency around processes as well as labour practices and the environmental impact of products can increase consumers’ liking for your brand.
There are brands within the sustainable fashion industry leading by example; Finisterre, a UK-based brand that provides total transparency of its supply chain, is an excellent case in point. The brand is super transparent about its materials and details where they source them from, as well as how their workers are treated. This transparency gives their customers the confidence that they are keeping to their promises and genuinely striving to make responsibly made clothing.
Bringing visibility of your supply chain to consumers not only builds trust but also establishes a level of accountability. This same concept can be applied to any retail product where the retailer builds on its blockchain technology with an omnichannel system. Through an omnichannel retailing approach, a retailer can get real-time traceable information about everything, like what it is that your customers are buying, was this item made from good raw materials, or how many stages did the product undergo before it reached the store.
Consider Ethical Certifications and Labeling
Use of certifications like Fair Trade, GOTS, and OEKO-TEX, all act as a signpost to consumers that you adhere to certain ethical standards. That is to say, these certifications equate consumer confidence that the goods they are receiving have been produced in a fair and environmentally friendly manner.
For example, Harrods sets bold sustainability targets for the future and should be commended for placing a greater emphasis on raising the profile of luxury fashion brands certified by bodies such as GOTS and Fair Trade, all in an effort to ensure that customers know when making high-end purchases they can do so safely with ethical standards.
Another example of this is Nudie Jeans, which, although Swedish, have a major footprint in the UK and are famous for their transparency around organic cotton. With certifications on almost every product, Nudie Jeans is launching garments with all the guarantees you expect when buying sustainable and ethical products.
In addition to the certifications, transparent and ethical labelling is crucial. Make sure labels are meaningful enough for consumers to tell which items have been produced ethically. That step is taken to the next level by retailers like Patagonia, who show their products’ environmental impact scores on labels so that consumers can make a more informed decision about how sustainable a purchase they are making.
Final Thoughts
Following these steps will help fashion retailers start to make a positive impact.
By investing in ethical and sustainable fashion practices and transparent business models, not only do brands invest in a better public image and long-term cost savings, but they also get to create loyal customers who take transparency and ethical responsibility seriously.
Retailers that have these practices in place are contributing positively to the global fashion industry and demonstrating leadership within the fashion market, and that is, above all else, rewarding ethical behaviour.
Remaining educated is key for retailers trying to succeed in the ethical fashion movement. Attend retail events such as the Retail Conference, to get a fresh perspective and an insight into networking with industry leaders and influencers. Register now!
