Adidas Among First to Lean Into TrusTrace ‘Material Compliance’ Software
A new material compliance solution is coming to fashion.
With Adidas as an early adopter, business-to-business software platform TrusTrace introduces its “Certified Material Compliance” solution that enables real-time traceability at a material level.
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TrusTrace aggregates data from an array of sources on behalf of companies using its open-source artificial intelligence, Blockchain and bots.
The company’s Certified Material Compliance acts as a one-stop solution covering a spectrum of requirements for material compliance, including identifying the percentage of certified versus non-certified material, supporting different chain of custody models and covering single component products to multicomponent products.
How automated the onboarding process is depends on the digital maturity of the brands and their suppliers.
“The most efficient approach, and what is absolutely needed to do traceability at the scale large companies operate at with millions of products and materials flowing through their supply chains, is to ensure the relevant data is pulled directly from the digital systems already existing at the brands,” Shameek Ghosh, TrusTrace cofounder and chief executive officer, told WWD. As the TrusTrace platform is open source, it can integrate seamlessly with any system, such as PLM, ERP, MDM or VMS systems.”
Currently, TrusTrace integrates data from sources like Higg (Materials Sustainability Index) and aligns with regulations that require proof at a purchase order or batch level. This includes proof of origin, as in the U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, proof of chemical compliance, as in The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, or proof for claims on sustainable materials, such as in the Guidance on the use of Environmental and Ethical Claims in Marketing for Denmark.
“So the data is ‘as valid’ as the source it is coming from, but we do validate the data to ensure that for example, a certificate for organic cotton being uploaded from a supplier matches the information from the brand side, so we ensure that the certificate is the right one for the particular product or material we are tracing,” said Ghosh.
Since launching the platform five years ago, TrusTrace has raised just under $8 million, with investment toward strengthening product offering and global expansion as well as building its network of fashion suppliers. To date, this spans more than 8,000 fashion suppliers with potential to trace 250,000 products and over $12 billion worth of goods on the platform.
“Where we see TrusTrace, and the reason our customers want to join us, is that we are able to provide granular, compliance-ready traceability at scale,” Ghosh said. “If you think about CSR — brands have had targets and reported on them on a corporate level for more than a decade. What is changing now, especially with all the incoming regulations, is that corporate-level claims are no longer enough. Brands need to know the exact chain of custody for a particular cotton T-shirt or pair of shoes to prove that the cotton is not coming from Xinjiang or exactly what percentage of the shoe in weight is made from recycled materials. We can provide all that data automated and at scale, making it easy for brands to substantiate sustainability claims, to comply with laws and regulations, and to set benchmarks and track progress on their ESG efforts.”
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