How we work with social certifications

It’s very easy for us to just list these certifications and tell you that they are important to us. However, we think it would be even better if we explain how we work with them. So, here goes: Every time we find a new supplier that we wish to work with they must go through one of these audits. It’s a requirement on our part. Thereafter, they share the complete report with us, and we revise it and send a Corrective Action Plan if needed.

Our goal is to find solutions, so if we discover something in the report that’s not compliant with the requirements, we like to start a discussion on what can be improved and not, can we change something in our work with them; is there something we can work out together? However, if there’s a repetitive problem that doesn’t seem to improve ever, we simply stop working with them. Usually, the factories we work with are bigger companies than we are, and we don’t have the leverage necessary to incentivize a change. It’s therefore important to find factories that share our vision from the start and build a trustworthy relationship before we can work on solving issues if needed.

If we find a supplier that we like, but that is lacking in financial means, we can help with the cost of the audit. This is if they don’t already have one of these certifications.