Introduction
Traceability is a growing topic in the fashion industry. It’s important for both consumers and brands, but it can be difficult to implement. We’re going to look at what traceability is and why it matters, as well as where the future of this technology might go.
What is traceability?
Traceability refers to the ability to know where something comes from. It can be applied to all levels of a supply chain—from raw materials right down to the final product. In fashion, traceability helps companies understand their supply chain and ensure ethical and sustainable practices. This means that each part of the process is monitored and documented, from sourcing materials through manufacturing and distribution.
The benefits of traceability include:
- Helping companies manage risks such as fraud or counterfeiting
- Reducing cost by improving efficiency along the entire supply chain (for example, by reducing waste)
- Ensuring compliance with regulations
Why is traceability important?
Traceability is important for ensuring that products are ethical, sustainable and safe. It can help to ensure that workers are treated fairly and paid a living wage, it can help to ensure that raw materials are sourced responsibly (and not from endangered species), and it can ensure that products are free of harmful chemicals or other contaminants.
The future of traceability
The concept of traceability is becoming increasingly important in the fashion industry. As more people become aware of the negative impacts that fast fashion has on our planet and its inhabitants, they are demanding transparency from brands. In response to this demand, many fashion companies have started adopting more sustainable practices like making garments more durable and creating ethical supply chains.
While these changes are definitely steps in the right direction, we still have a long way to go before companies can claim their supply chains are truly “ethically sourced” or “sustainable” if they aren’t implementing proper traceability systems.
Traceability allows consumers to track where their clothes were made and by whom so they can make educated decisions about what brands they support with their dollars—a responsibility that falls heavily on consumers who want a better world for themselves and future generations. With proper traceability practices in place, we will see increased accountability amongst manufacturers who want their products to stand out from other brands by showing off how ethical and sustainable their operations really are!
Traceability in fashion is getting more important and easier to implement.
Traceability is getting more important and easier to implement for ethical and sustainable fashion. Traceability helps identify where problems are in the supply chain, so you can solve them.
It’s easy to see why traceability is an important part of the process: consumers are increasingly concerned about how their clothes are made, which means brands have to be able to prove that they’re making ethically-sourced products.
Conclusion
Traceability and accountability are becoming more important in fashion, but they’re not always easy to implement. While technology is helping us create better systems to track and trace products, there’s still a lot of work left to be done before we can say this industry is 100% transparent. But even though progress has been slow, there are some encouraging developments happening all over the world—like Italy passing a law requiring brands selling leather goods or garments made from animal skins to keep records about where those materials came from (no matter where in Europe). We’ve also seen big companies like Nike promise transparency on their supply chains by 2020 as well as smaller ones like yours truly working hard every day to do right by our customers!
Read more about the future of fashion here.