Kingpins Transparency Poll Shows Keen Industry Interest
The denim industry wants to know where their cotton comes from, according to the results of a Kingpins poll.
In July, the denim trade show organizer polled the industry about transparency. Some 99 people responded, according to Andrew Olah, show founder and CEO. All respondents said they care about data and knowing where the cotton comes from. They all likewise said they would endorse having a garment tag that gave the whole story, in a unanimous vote for transparency.
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The recent poll had eight questions with few respondents passing on any of them. They ranged from whether industry professionals cared about environmental data on products they buy, or sustainability information like CO2, water and energy use on garments.
Some 75 percent of respondents said they felt it was their “human right” to know how cotton was grown, particularly in denim. Respondents were almost evenly divided on whether the exact plot the cotton came from had to be identified, roughly 52 percent saying no, not necessary, while roughly 48 percent said yes, they’d want to be that specific.
Olah keeps banging the transparency drum, gathering information despite the fact that full-transparency U.S. cotton already exists in the form of Fibermax, has existed since 2007, and that he was instrumental in its genesis.
Focus groups in Portland, Maine, and Milwaukee, in 2008, confirmed that “made in U.S.A. cotton” had a higher perceived value. The fact that Fibermax, renamed e3, is languishing in marketing limbo is nothing but “a transparency failure,” in Olah’s view. Responses to Kingpins’ survey indicate that it could be a success if market forces turned in its favor.
The response to the survey may have come in response to Olah’s founder’s letter published in July, where he outlined the trajectory of e3 and where it stands today. It started with Fibermax, a seed, he wrote, “that changed the life of Texas farmers.” According to Olah, this seed allowed for optimal tracing from each farm and each plot within the farm, it promised transparency from seed to bale and could demonstrate continuous environmental improvement.
Despite all that, e3 could never win approval as “suitable” for Better Cotton and got rejected every time it was submitted. According to Olah, Australian and Brazilian farms and farmers were accepted, “despite 99.9 percent of those farms having no data whatsoever.” At the same time, some cotton branded Fibermax was found not to be pure Fibermax product but a mix of it with other cottons. This was what led Bayer Cropscience, which owned it, to develop a verification system.
Olah asserts that the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol is aware that Better Cotton is not implementing a program of full transparency or plot-by-plot environmental data and turns a blind eye.
He asks how the industry can ever realize the goal of being fully sustainable if major players know what to do but don’t do it. Cellulose factories have all their data available, but 99 percent of cotton sold does not, he said. “How can cotton compete?” Cotton farmers are being taken advantage of by those who don’t play fair.
On behalf of the Transformers Foundation, which he founded in 2020, and armed with the recent poll results, Olah aims to achieve full industry transparency by 2028.
