Who Made My Clothes- ICHI

In response to #whomademyclothes for Fashion Revolution Week we are going to first look at ICHI- one of our best selling Danish brands.

Here is their statement on how their clothes are designed and sourced:

The following is a statement direct from the brand:

We believe in a win-win relationship.

It is our firm belief that enabling people to grow within our business and creating win-win relationships with our business partners, is what makes us a success. We have a responsibility in ensuring that everyone involved in designing, producing and selling our products as well as, picking the cotton and dying the fabric are people who are treated with dignity and respect and that all efforts are made to ensure that both national and international Human Rights – and Labour laws are followed.

Ethical supply chain

Our work with ethical supply chain management, circle around our membership of BSCI. We use the BSCI Code of Conduct to communicate about our requirements for social compliance. The BSCI Code of Conduct is based on the ILO conventions, UN Global Compact and the UN Guiding Principles. BSCI is a platform for companies to share their work with sustainability and use it as a collaborative approach to increase the influence in the supply chain and at the same time avoid audit fatigue. However, BSCI for us is just a minimum requirement for doing business with DK Company. It is through partnerships and capacity building within our supply chain that we can really make a difference in the global supply chain. We do not know the farmer who picked our cotton, or the woman who made our clothes, but we have a desire to always learn more and increase our influence in our supply chain. We are humble towards our responsibility and we work every day to increase our knowledge about our supply chain and ensure decent and fair working conditions and protection of the environment.

Bangladesh

Yes, we produce some of our styles in Bangladesh and we have signed and are working actively with the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety to build up the industry in the country. When signing the Accord we have recognized our responsibility to: - Maintain our sourcing volume in Bangladesh, in order to secure the jobs of the millions of workers working in the garment industry there. - Be transparent about our operations in the country and enroll all the factories that we work with, in the Accord Inspection program. - Help to remediate the issues found in the inspection program - Encourage and support the formation of worker participation committees in order to enable the workers voices to be heard.

Ethical sourcing

We ask all our suppliers to work with their supply chain and set requirements the same way as we put ethical requirements on them. All our suppliers have signed our Ethical Sourcing Requirements. DK Company is aware that we cannot put any requirements on our suppliers without looking at our own approach and sourcing methods. To keep becoming better and better at ethical sourcing, we are currently building up capacity within our company to make everyone aware of their influence in achieving a more ethical supply chain.

Stakeholder dialogue

Our approach to CSR is to engage in partnerships with our stakeholders and engage in dialogues about some of the key issues we face in the global textile supply chain. We cannot do much as a single company, so it is very important for us to have a good dialogue with our stakeholders – this is the reason why we chose to become a member of the Danish Trading Initiative (DIEH) in 2014.

Social Responsibility in Denmark

It is our policy always ensuring a good working environment for our employees. We are convinced, that happy, healthy and motivated people is a prerequisite to creating business success. We encourage a work-life balance, which is reflected in our policies for flexible working hours and in our investment in coaching for all employees both for their private and professional lives.

DK Company is a Fur Free Retailer

In 2012, DK Company made a decision to become a Fur Free company. We have an Animal Welfare Policy signed by our suppliers, where we ban mulesing, live plucking and live skinning of animals and we require that the leather we use, only derive from animals who have been bred for the food industry.

Chemical Restrictions

We have our own set of chemical restrictions, which restricts dangerous chemicals in our clothes and/or in the production. The chemical restrictions are made to protect the workers who work with the chemicals, our customers who wear the clothes and not least the environment. Our testing programme helps us to control that our requirements are being kept. We cannot test everything on all our products, but for each of our collections we make a manual risk assessment and pick out styles for tests, that we consider high risk in regards to chemicals. Our products are tested from production samples, and if they fail in tests, they will not reach their final destination (the shops) until the products lives up to the standards of our Chemical Restrictions.