Ethical sourcing, in general, is a thinly followed subject. It doesn't mean the public doesn't care about the factory conditions in which a product is made. It just means reading about it's not top of mind.
When we launched this blog 6 months ago, we knew this. We were also aware that the topic of sourcing and overseas factories was focused on simple "algorithms" like: factory = sweatshops; or dictatorship + China + factory = great affront to humanity and the natural environment; and finally: Canada + factory = economic patriotism, enlightenment and better here than there.
There are strains of truth in these simple equations but the world is much more complex. This blog seeks to explore this complexity and to help us dig beneath the veneer. Because underneath all of this are people who are no different from those who shop in our stores or work at MEC.
Since this blog was launched six months ago, it has had almost 32,000 views. A view doesn't mean a read. It means someone looked at it.
I typically devote 3 hours a week to this blog. But it's actually more. Usually, I layout a blog theme in my mind while riding to and from work, running, swimming or working out. I then compose it. Or I write several segments in advance during business travel.
Have a great holiday and let's blog in Jan.
Deng Xiaopeng didn’t care if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. What Mao’s successor meant was it isn’t important whether China’s economy is centrally planned or market based. What matters is that it creates jobs and feeds its people.
Right now I’m on the KCR train from Kowloon to Shenzhen. Shenzhen is neither black nor white. It’s grey, sprawling and awkward. Forty years ago it was just a sleepy fishing village probably with crystal blue skies. Thanks to Deng’s pragmatism, it’s now a booming commercial centre with hundreds of factories and service sector firms. It has the second biggest port after Shanghai with a population of over 8 million and a GDP of just under 80 billion (CDN$).
Shenzhen like the majority of China’s major urban centres is habitually blanketed by smog and pollution. Beneath the haze is a city oddly planned. It sprawls like an American city but is intermittently broken by tracks of green space and congested concentrations of smoky factories, condo high rises and 
huge office towers. Urban planning in Shen Zhen has a rushed feeling to it. Kind of like its accelerated economic growth.
MEC has one contract factory in Shen Zhen. My trip today is to meet a locally based compliance firm to help us crack the wage and payroll issues of this important long term factory. To achieve greater leverage with our supplier, we’re tag teaming with a big US brand to motivate the factory to be more transparent and compliant. Tag teaming is the “in thing” for compliance. The logic is to get all the brands (nee customers) of a factory to conduct one uber audit and negotiate one master improvement plan. This will drastically reduce the number of audits a factory undergoes (sometimes up to 12 or more a year) and harmonize often contradicting demands by customers (e.g., direction a door swings open). This will save time and money for factories and brands.
If it takes 10 paces to realize this lofty goal, we (industry) have gone two steps. MEC is working with 20 brands on this (all American). Getting brands to want and ask for the same thing from a factory is tough. It’s like herding cats. Each brand has its own timelines, priorities, liability concerns and of course egos. We all want the world of “supply chains” to get better but given our competitive nature, we want our brand to achieve it first (and hence have first dibs on bragging rights). This I’ve noticed tempers the depth of our collaboration.
The legacy of Deng, catching mice - prevails everywhere in China. Creating jobs and feeding a population of over 1 billion remains paramount. And it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white. Maybe that’s a lesson Western brands can take from the Chinese: focus on the goal and let’s not worry who gets there first.
Anyone who's worked in an organization can attest that it can be difficult to get everyone aligned. Especially, when individuals work on seemingly conflicting portfolios.
My job at Mountain Equipment Co-op is to vet our contract factories and to work with everyone to get them to meet a human rights standard. Sometimes this makes it very challenging for the merchandisers to do their jobs. For example, not too long ago a buyer spent significant time sourcing a great product. At the end we couldn't sell it because the factory had major problems. The buyer took a hit and is starting over again.
There is a misconception that retailing is simple: just buy some inventory, mark it up and sell it. If it were only this simple. Merchandising is complicated and tied to extremely sensitive staged time lines. Do any of this wrong and you're stuck with lots of unsold and out of season goods (or out of stock hits). (That's how and why Woodwards, Dylex, Eaton's Woolco, Kmart and etc., all died). Getting factories to perform to a human rights standards complicates this. Factories must not only deliver product at the right price, time, quantity and style, they must also behave in a certain manner.
Getting factories to deliver product and behave is daunting. It's less daunting when your merchandisers are on board. To date, the buyers, QA, designers and production people screen factories, reinforce ethical obligations, and give up hard earned 
merchandising "deals" when a factory is non compliant. That's a good sign because the bigger test is coming when we begin to deal with those long term factories who contribute nicely to our bottom line and who are incrementally improving on the wokers rights front. That's when we test the real commitment of MEC.
So what's the point of this "hurray hurray" message? Well, when we talk about integrating human rights to our business practices its more than just joining a human rights group or donating some money. It's balancing pure commercial objectives with social ones. It's building into your business, processes and ideas that move human rights forward. It's no longer just about the cash register by the entrance of a store.
Retailing ain't easy. Ethical sourcing is complex. Being successful while doing the two is a challenge.
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