Supplier Selection
We deal only with suppliers who can match our ethics in terms of racial and sexual equality, working conditions and reward, accommodation of disability and environmental protection.
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Buying Direct and Regular Checks
We do not sell anything we have not sourced ourselves. This way we can be confident of the background of our goods and so can you. We visit India and Nepal twice a year and within time constraints we visit each supplier we will be ordering from in the near future and say hello at least to the rest.
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Long Term Relationships
We operate on trust and openness as shown by our long term relationships with our suppliers. We aim for the long term with every supplier we deal with by being open, paying deposits and balances as soon as we can and keeping in touch. Our key relationships run much deeper than trading. Further, we have never yet taken a design to a supplier and asked them to make it exclusively for us - if they can sell it more widely then they can go ahead. We don't restrict our suppliers in any way which is greatly appreciated, and we forward contact details where this will help our suppliers to make new business.
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Working Conditions
There is no issue with child labour with any of our suppliers. If we can't be sure that fair trade and common sense criteria are met we do not deal with that supplier. We also make sure that there is adequate provision for helping employees when they are sick.
We satisfy ourselves that all workers are paid more than the published minimum wage.
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Workforce Equality
We cannot make our suppliers alter the balance of men and women and we are up against cultural issues in this area. However, we do encourage them to consider and act on the issue by discussing fair trade criteria when we visit. Our larger suppliers tend to be more enlightened and have women in critical posts such as Quality Control Manager and Samples Production Manager.
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Paying a Fair Price
For most orders we act on trust and pay what is asked without questioning or haggling - a big benefit of our long term relationships. When dealing with new suppliers we research the fair price ourselves very thoroughly beforehand.
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Helping with Capacity Building
We have grown hand in hand with many of our suppliers and we hope that the trade we have brought to them has been significant in their growth.
We have helped suppliers directly with new machinery in the past and currently are bringing our wide IT experience to bear with a number of suppliers, e.g. training with spreadsheets and drawing packages, and encouraging proper email etiquette and efficiency.
We are currently assisting one supplier in sorting out his garment and swatch designs, codings and photographs. The end result will be a normalised, cleaned and indexed database with embedded photographs that will allow him to market his goods much more easily over email, the web and trade shows. Critically there will be less room for mistakes in ordering and re-ordering. He will be free to use this data (and any ordering, reporting or analysis applications we build on it) with all his customers.
We are also trying to work out with our suppliers ways of making deliveries more predictable by being realistic about production capacity, being clear about when religious festivals, strikes, politics and parties intervene and almost above all, by recognising our need to be informed.
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