With an increasing number of consumers willing to spend more for products they believe to be more sustainable, it can be tempting to focus your marketing and messaging efforts on the most eco-friendly aspects of your products. 

We had the distinct pleasure of hosting a Q&A with Kathleen Talbot, Chief Sustainability Officer and VP of Operations at Reformation to pick her brain about one of our favorite topics: sustainability in the apparel industry.

The state of the climate is scary. In fact, it’s overwhelming when you consider that the retail industry accounts for nearly 8% of the global GHG greenhouse gas emissions. 

CHARMING is very pleased to announce that we are further expanding our manufacturing presence in Mexico and Central America. Our customers have told us that they need to be closer to the needle to help them with response time, and freight, and we have listened.  Last year we established CHARMING Guatemala (Guatemala City), and this past month we took possession of our brand new factory building on July 15, 2022.

While 2020 and 2021 were certainly years of unknowns, one thing is certain: online shopping is here to stay. According to one study from Shopify, over 46% of consumers said they feel uncomfortable shopping in-person

Conventional thinking says the concept of “brand-building” is led by advertising, marketing, presentation, and point of sale merchandising. Yet we know that consumers have a whole host of expectations that live outside of these four walls. The days of leaving brand perceptions to your marketing department is over. 

When you hear the word disrupt, you tend to think of a positive, innovative change. But when it comes to today’s supply chain in a post-pandemic world, disruption is a double-edged sword.

In a pre-pandemic world, QR codes were long forgotten. After nearly vanishing into obscurity, the QR code is back. And not just on restaurant tables. A Statista June 2021 survey found that 45 percent of shoppers from the US had used a marketing-related QR code in the previous three months. The share was highest among those aged 18 to 29, and 59 percent of respondents believed that QR codes would be a permanent use for their mobile phone in the future.

In supply chain terms, sustainability is the ultimate resource management, ensuring balanced supply and demand for the long-term, avoiding depletion of natural resources, and maintaining ecological balance. But what about circularity?

If the global pandemic has taught businesses anything, it’s that supply chain resilience is critical to future-proofing brand and business operations. Global sourcing and manufacturing are increasingly critical to meeting evolving consumer demands and sustainability requirements. And at the epicenter of that evolution is nearshoring.