Icebreaker follows food industry lead
NATIONAL: A unique new supply chain initiative by a New Zealand-based outdoor apparel company could potentially revolutionise the way consumers purchase their garments.
From this month all garments sold by top-end merino wool brand Icebreaker will have an internal label bearing what the brand has termed a 'Baacode' number. A swingtag will tell customers how to enter their individual Baacode on the Wellington-based company's website and trace the merino fibre in their garment through to the sheep stations where it was grown.
The initiative allows customers to see the living conditions of the sheep, meet the high country farmers who run the sheep stations, and follow the fibre to the factories that knit, dye, finish, cut, manufacture and ship the end garments.
Icebreaker CEO Jeremy Moon said the first product with Baacode labels on it was being delivered in August to North America with Europe rolling out in September and Australia and New Zealand in October.
While Moon declined to reveal the exact cost of the exercise, he said it was probably in the order of "a few hundred thousand dollars".
"We haven't done the maths yet but this involved just about everyone in the company - from IT to design to production and sales. We had to write all new software in order to make this work. Overall it probably cost [so little] because we had the necessary know how within the business - a great investment."
Moon said since its launch in 1995, the company had always believed in transparency and traceability.
Its goal was to always evolve and improve while the initiative had the added advantage of allowing his company to differentiate its merino growers from their Australian counterparts, he said.
"Real sustainability is not just a slogan or ad, and consumers will have to be on the look out for 'green washing' producers who pick up a branding theme idea and pretend to be green. But there are a lot of people who are genuinely doing things about it and improving their businesses, and at the other end companies are radically redefining their whole business to really embrace sustainability on all levels. That's what we're trying to do."
Icebreaker - whose range of vests, jackets, shorts and pants is currently stocked in 2000 stores across 24 countries - works with a number of factory partners in China as well as a French wool cleaning plant that recycles and cleans its water and extracts the lanolin for sale to the cosmetics industry.
Other partner companies include a German spinning plant that reuses the heat from processing into its air conditioning system, and a garment and textile manufacturing plant that conserves energy through large-volume dyeing and also has an on-site water recycling plant. All partner companies are required to sign up to Icebreaker's ethical manufacturing standards.
By Tracey Porter