During the pandemic, home goods sales have soared as consumers prioritize spending on their living spaces. At the same time, shopping migrated online and individuals gained more time to investigate their purchases, leading them to invest in quality, organic and sustainable goods.

Eco-mindedness is not solely a millennial or Gen Z trait. During a recent conversation with Sourcing Journal founder and president Edward Hertzman, Corinne Bentzen, CEO of bedding and bath product retailer The Company Store, explained that consumers across all generations are considering the environmental impact of their purchases. “The baby boomers are becoming more responsible as they are bringing grandkids into this world and they want to leave a better footprint behind,” Bentzen said.

Discover more about how consumers are weighing sustainability in their home purchases and why TENCEL™ is a fit for The Company Store’s promise of conscious, comfortable linens.

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For fashion to break out of its disposability rut, it needs to focus on quality. And quality begins with using materials that can last.

A key tactic to reduce a garment’s impact is to get more use out of it. Being able to wash and wear something 40 times instead of five times makes a huge difference in the overall calculation of its environmental cost, explained World Textile Sourcing (WTS) CEO Luis Antonio Aspillaga during a recent discussion with Sourcing Journal founder and president Edward Hertzman. “Sustainability works when the garment has a longer life,” Aspillaga noted.

Hear more about WTS’ experience working with TENCEL™ and how quality relates to sustainability.

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Sustainability has been a top talking point for the apparel supply chain in recent years, but it’s safe to say that mere awareness doesn’t cut it anymore. Results are a must.

To get there, brands have to set “measurable and quantifiable” goals, according to Min Zhu, Ph.D., technical director, U.S. and Canada softlines at SGS North America Inc., a testing, inspection and certification company. But when the sustainability conversation extends beyond the brand, suppliers typically need more explicit directions and training to set these goals in motion.

“The training that we provide to the supply chain should not just end at the Tier 1 supplier,” Dr. Zhu said in a conversation with Edward Hertzman, founder and president of Sourcing Journal. “We should go as far as we can reach to ensure the mutual understanding of the brand’s commitments, goals and expectations—this is critical.”

Listen to hear about SGS's Sustainability Ambitions 2030 roadmap.

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Got data? Of course, you do. Most companies are drowning in it.

But useful data? That’s a different story.

“Talk to brand executives or decision makers today and no one’s really saying they don’t have enough data,” said Dan Leahy, co-founder and CEO of retail product decision platform MakerSights. “But ask people within a brand responsible for bringing products to market: ‘Do you have the data at your fingertips important to guide the actual decisions you need to make?’ then the results are a lot more mixed.”

In this chat, Leahy discusses why the need for actionable data is more urgent than ever.

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While the Covid-19 pandemic hit most retailers hard, it created uniquely intense challenges for Hotter Shoes. The vast majority of the footwear retailer’s sales were to older customers who patronized the company’s brick-and-mortar stores. These customers, who are not digital natives, were among the least likely to shift to buying online. Hotter needed to build up its e-commerce presence and appeal to a new group of shoppers at the same time.

While the company implemented First Insight’s “Voice of the Customer” predictive analytics to make more accurate design, buying and pricing decisions back in December 2019, the comfort footwear manufacturer and retailer has since gained a longer-term benefit of its deep digital transformation: attracting newer, younger shoppers.

In this chat, Ian Watson, CEO of Hotter Shoes, and Greg Petro, CEO of First Insight, talk with Sourcing Journal founder and president Edward Hertzman about how Hotter Shoes has expanded into a younger customer base.

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Sustainability doesn’t always have to be a hefty investment.

For apparel brands that don’t know where to begin tackling sustainability, starting small can be a great way to build out a more eco-friendly supply chain.

As brands prioritize using more sustainable raw materials, adopting circularity initiatives or setting science-based targets, they often overlook labeling as an area for quick improvement.

And while sustainable labels may be a cost-effective means to reduce waste, developing these labels also reflects a deeper, more holistic commitment to brand sustainability goals, according to Jimmy Christopher, group sustainability officer at apparel labeling and packaging solutions provider ITL Group.

In this chat with Sourcing Journal founder and president Edward Hertzman, Christopher and Sabine Watson, ITL Group’s global brand manager, discuss how to make labels more sustainable.

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Marks & Spencer is listening to its customers.

Five years after enlisting First Insight to assist in determining design, buying and pricing for lingerie products, Marks & Spencer (M&S) has scaled up the company’s “Voice of the Customer” product testing.

The U.K.-based retailer has since expanded the consumer-driven predictive analytics software platform to more than 50 departments in apparel and footwear, covering both its own private label brands and third-party brands, according to Elaine Wheeler, head of digital product development at Marks & Spencer.

In a chat with Edward Hertzman, president and founder of Sourcing Journal, and Greg Petro, CEO and founder of First Insight, Wheeler noted how testing has been fruitful for M&S.

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While there are numerous new tech platforms to help retailers improve efficiencies on their sales floor, a system is only as good as the frontline workers who use it. Brick-and-mortar retailing has already suffered greatly—with consumers migrating to e-commerce faster than you can say “free shipping”—and the frontline work force now is being tasked with more complex jobs. This leads to sub-optimal job performance, outright mistakes and high turnover.

“Before, employees just had to put the stock out, work with the customer and ring up the register,” said Michael Appel, president of retail consultancy Appel Associates and the former CEO of retail chain Rue 21. “Now, we've added all these software solutions, payment solutions, buy online, pick up in store [BOPIS], ship from store, and more. Things that didn't even exist before now make an employee’s job much more complex. And it’s tougher for them to feel mastery.”

It’s all about data, which the Axonify platform gathers via AI. Via the daily learning tasks, the system can see who knows what, and who needs more work in certain areas for optimal learning.

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Customer demand is becoming more unpredictable by the minute, putting retailers on the defensive as they try to understand how to optimize their product merchandise offering, services and experiences. In today’s world, to get the supply and demand equation right, retailers must generate as much data as possible from product testing.

“They need to rely on data to anticipate as opposed to react,” said Greg Petro, CEO and founder of First Insight. “The winners will anticipate. And the anticipation is the challenge. You can’t rest on a historical data point at this stage or leverage intuition to a large degree. It does not make sense economically any further.”

Listen to this chat between Petro and Edward Hertzman, founder and president of Sourcing Journal, to hear about First Insight's Next-Gen XM Platform.

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The mass cancellation of apparel orders throughout the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in an excess supply of raw materials that manufacturers and suppliers quickly pivoted into the products that survived the chopping block. That left a dearth of inputs once new orders began to flow again. This chain of events put supply chains under unprecedented pressure, and created questions around the quality and integrity of the resulting finished goods.

In the case of raw materials, the biggest concern would be swapping out fibers from nominated suppliers for whatever’s on hand, according to Wayne Buchen, vice president at molecular-based supply chain security company Applied DNA Sciences. And retailers that don’t have a full grasp of their supply chain might not even be able to tell the difference between a high-quality or low-quality fiber.

The Applied DNA Sciences team built the CertainT® platform specifically to enable brands to handle their own internal materials tagging and testing, whether at the yarn level or when the finished product arrives at the company warehouse.

Listen to this chat to hear Buchen discuss this “tag, test and track” method.

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