Australian bootmaker R.M.Williams confirmed in its FY25 Modern Slavery Statement that it had exited a relationship with a supplier in the last financial year.
According to the report, R.M.Williams had a supplier who had declined to participate in the brand’s transparency efforts. After multiple discussions to find a path forward with them, the pair had reached an impasse, with the bootmaker deciding to cut ties with the supplier.
“We do not believe that supplier relationships should be exited lightly, and all efforts should be made to remediate issues identified rather than terminate relationships,” R.M.Williams shared in the report. “However, without a commitment to transparency this was not possible in this situation.”
The brand added that transparency is at the core of its Modern Slavery program, “because if we cannot get visibility into our supply chain we cannot ensure we are mitigating risk.”
R.M.Williams did not disclose who the supplier was or what they supplied. The bootmaker’s overall supply chain covers three key spaces, including procurement of materials and components for manufacturing in the R.M.Williams workshop in South Australia, procurement of finished goods from both domestic Australian and international supply chain partners, and indirect procurement for goods and services for operational needs.
In addition to a “strong network” of local product sources, material inputs for R.M.Williams products are sourced from 25 overseas countries.
The exit from the supplier last year comes as the brand ramps up its efforts to stamp out modern slavery in its supply chains. This included scaling and embedding a third-party grievance mechanism and working closely with its supplier base to operationalise this mechanism across their workforces in FY25.
“We also expanded our product tracing program to cover both seasonal and core collections,” R.M.Williams CEO Paul Grosmann shared in a letter in the report.
“We significantly enhanced traceability in our core material supply chain (being leather) and increased overall product traceability from 86% in FY24 to 90% visibility to Tier-2 in FY25.”
The report also stated that by the end of FY25, 74 per cent of high materiality suppliers were audited, all which cover 91 per cent of the brand’s spend.
The report also noted that no actual or suspected instances of modern slavery were identified in its operations or supply chains over FY25, however it did identify several non-compliances in third-party audits that could increase the risk of modern slavery and have worked with suppliers to address these. This includes non-compliances related to freedom of association.
Under Chinese labour law, freedom of association – or to form a union – is significantly restricted, with R.M.Williams claiming this presents challenges when evaluating third party social audits in its Chinese suppliers.