Titled “The Data Advantage – A Practical Guide to Building De-risked, Compliant and Future-Ready Supply Chains”, the TrusTrace playbook launches at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen.
The playbook arrives at a time when the industry faces increased regulatory pressure, climate risks, and a demand for transparency that has led to a substantial reporting workload for suppliers.
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It introduces ‘The TrusTrace Compliance Canvas’, a framework aimed at aiding brands and manufacturers to better collaborate on a standardised set of supply chain data. This is backed by contributions from industry participants.
Interviews with brands such as adidas, Hugo Boss, and Primark are featured within the playbook. These brands, along with suppliers like Epic Group, Karacasu Tekstil, and Impetus Group, discuss their strategies for data management and traceability in light of changing regulations and environmental objectives amidst policy uncertainty.
Primark Product Traceability and Assurance head Cari Atkinson said: “At Primark, we’ve focused on creating clarity for our suppliers by aligning on the data that matters most, and building the internal systems and skills to use it well. Working with TrusTrace has helped us turn complex data requirements into something more manageable for our teams and suppliers.”
adidas Sustainability and ESG SVP Sigrid Buehrle said: “My North Star is to get supply chain-related data to the same robustness as financial data. That’s where we need to get to, with an effective data landscape and a standardised approach to data collection and evaluation.”
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By GlobalDataThe playbook also includes insights from Policy Hub on potential future policies, Textile ETP’s views on global manufacturing preparedness, and an analysis of corporate climate litigation from The London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
The playbook underscores the importance of pragmatic collaboration in supply chain data management. It suggests that this data should be more than a compliance tool; it can also be instrumental in informed sourcing decisions and risk management.
“A fascinating insight from these interviews is that despite the already huge data burden, with myriad tools and many platforms and certifications, what’s collected is mostly documents, not meaningful data or numbers for calculating and addressing actual environmental impacts. It’s mere foundational due diligence,” the book’s author Brooke Roberts-Islam stated.
Brands and suppliers have also highlighted that subjective interpretations of regulations and inconsistent methodologies hinder achieving tangible outcomes, notes TrusTrace.
TrusTrace CEO and co-founder Shameek Ghosh added: “As data becomes the new cornerstone of compliance and climate readiness, brands need more than intention—they need infrastructure. This playbook outlines what actionable, standardised data collaboration should look like.”
Last month, TrusTrace introduced an AI-powered enhancement to help fashion brands and manufacturers gather, centralise, and scrutinise supply chain traceability information.
