Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain: Lessons from H&M

Abstract

Sustainability is significantly important for fashion business due to consumers' increasing awareness of environment. When a fashion company aims to promote sustainability, the main linkage is to develop a sustainable supply chain. This paper contributes to current knowledge of sustainable supply chain in the textile and clothing industry. We first depict the structure of sustainable fashion supply chain including eco-material preparation, sustainable manufacturing, green distribution, green retailing, and ethical consumers based on the extant literature. We study the case of the Swedish fast fashion company, H&M, which has constructed its sustainable supply chain in developing eco-materials, providing safety training, monitoring sustainable manufacturing, reducing carbon emission in distribution, and promoting eco-fashion. Moreover, based on the secondary data and analysis, we learn the lessons of H&M's sustainable fashion supply chain from the country perspective: (1) the H&M's sourcing managers may be more likely to select suppliers in the countries with lower degrees of human wellbeing; (2) the H&M's supply chain manager may set a higher level of inventory in a country with a higher human wellbeing; and (3) the H&M CEO may consider the degrees of human wellbeing and economic wellbeing, instead of environmental wellbeing when launching the online shopping channel in a specific country.

Game Theoretic Analysis of Carbon Emission Abatement in Fashion Supply Chains Considering Vertical Incentives and Channel Structures

“…Although they hold the research contexts similar to ours, they do not consider any carbon emission issues as we do here. Nagurney and Yu [39] and Shen [40] are representative two among the extant studies considering carbon reduction or environmental problems in fashion business operations. By focusing on a complicated fashion supply chain network subject to environmental constraints, Nagurney and Yu [39] develop optimization models to get the network equilibriums of apparel products and also examine the effect of various setting parameters on the network performance.…”

“…By focusing on a complicated fashion supply chain network subject to environmental constraints, Nagurney and Yu [39] develop optimization models to get the network equilibriums of apparel products and also examine the effect of various setting parameters on the network performance. With a different manner, Shen [40] exploits the case study method to describe in detail how the fashion firm H&M conducts her sustainable operations including carbon emission reducing efforts. However, both of them two do not touch the topics of determining emission-reduction means, such as mechanism design and supply chain structures reconstructing, which is exactly what we concentrate on.…”

Environmental and Social Impact Free Stance and Consequences on the Operational Performance

“…Earlier research has dealt with several environmental and social issues, including sustainable apparel product development [34], sustainable fashion SCs [35], reverse logistics [36], logistics social responsibility [37], carbon accounting [38], the case of fair trade products [23], positioning stakeholder theory within the debate on CSR [39], social and environmental reporting [40,41], sustainable purchasing and supply [42], environmental impacts of production and consumption in country specific contexts [2], governance of sustainable SCs in the fast fashion industry [43], CSR in garment sourcing networks [10], multi tier sustainable SCs [16], and sustainability integration into global fashion operations [44]. Nonetheless, there is a further need in research to address the specific relationship between companies' internal and external sustainability strategies, and the influence of capabilities developed for sustainability management on operational performance areas.…”

Sustainability Analysis of Supply Chains with Fashion Products under Alternative Power Structures and Loss-Averse Supplier

“…Reference [15] investigate several channel structures (direct or indirect channels) of a remanufacturer, and find that the channel choice may be inefficient when considering social welfare and environmental protection. Reference [16] depicts the structure of sustainable supply chain with fashion products, and analyzes the sustainability of H&M's supply chain. Reference [5] clarify main concerns of sustainable fashion as (1) sustainable production and remanufacturing, (2) green marketing, (3) green information sharing, and (4) green attitude and education.…”