-
When we start working with a new supplier, they sign our Responsible Sourcing Commitment, which sets out our expectations of working conditions.
-
-
Our responsibilities
We have a team dedicated to working with our suppliers to ensure products made for Boden are responsibly sourced. We also visit factories in person to make sure our standards are being met. Our programme is constantly evolving, but it’s centred on the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code, an internationally recognised set of labour standards based on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions.
-
HERproject™
We’ve been working with this organisation – which is run by Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) – since 2014 to educate the women in our workforce about nutrition and health. Knowledge is shared through peer-led training and spread beyond co-workers to families and local communities. So far, our partnership’s reached nine of the factories where we make clothes, and over 5000 individuals, with 140 training to become peer educators.
-
Our jersey is made by a manufacturer which was founded in 1982, with just three people working in a garage.
It now has its own factory set in an orange grove, employs more than 100 workers and is run by the founders’ son Miguel. It’s a trade he knows inside out; as a child he used to sit on the knee of their first seamstress, who works there to this day. He even came to work at Boden for a while to learn our ropes.
-
If you know your denim, you’ll know Turkey is a world leader in beautiful jeans right now.
And the factory we discovered on the outskirts of Istanbul leads the way in both premium denim and sustainable standards. The owners of the factory make manufacturing cool with their Friday jam sessions (they have a guitar and full-size drum kit in the showroom) – and, of course, their attention to detail.
-
This family-run business in Delhi started out with a single sewing machine in a shed in Agra in 1989.
Over the past 30 years, its owners have built it up to something of a footwear powerhouse. We’ve been working with them for over a decade, and if you’ve bought a pair of women’s ankle boots or leather plimsolls, you’ll be able to vouch for the factory’s quality, too.
-
-
Trading ethically
We work with our trusted manufacturing partners in China who are ethically audited on an annual basis using the SMETA audit methodology.
We do not work with any suppliers or factories in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or (knowingly) source materials from the region either. We are aware of the on-going situation and are talking to people like the Ethical Trading Initiative to ensure supply chains in China are free of any forced labour, as we do with all our suppliers around the world.
Our ethical partners
-
BSR
BSR is a global non-profit organisation working with businesses to create a just and sustainable world. We’re proud to partner with them on HERprojectTM, the largest workplace-based women's empowerment program in global supply chains.
-
HERproject
HERproject educates and supports women in the workplace, home and community.
-
SEDEX
This organisation helps us to use and share data about working practises with other similar businesses. It has a community of 55,000 members helping one another to manage and monitor their supply chains - working together with open dialogue: https://www.sedexglobal.com/
-
&Wider
&Wider is a company that provides us, and the factory management, with anonymous direct worker feedback on areas such as: Health and Safety, Labour Rights & Freedom of Association, Wages & Working Hours, Physical Abuse or Confinement, Worker Wellbeing. This is used in an addition to the annual ethical audit. It gives us a fuller picture of what is going on at the factories and provides us and the factories with priorities we need to focus on. We currently have this running in two factories at the moment but are budgeted to add an additional seven units this year. On average each site will go through four call circles a year.
-
Ethical Trading Initiative
Boden became a member of ETI in 2008, and committed to the ETI Base Code, an internationally recognised set of labour standards aimed at improving workers’ rights in global supply chains.
ETI is an alliance of brands, NGOs and Trade Unions that promotes workers’ rights all over the world.
‘A world where all workers are free from exploitation and discrimination, and enjoy conditions of freedom, security and equity.’
As members, we join in forums and working groups addressing specific issues and regions, and work together to share our learnings. Very real solutions continue to come out of our work with the ETI: https://ethicaltrade.org
