At Vivienne Westwood, we know that it is our responsibility to connect with the people who work with our products. We want to build a strong and transparent supply chain, in order to guarantee the safety and well-being of every person who works with us, directly or indirectly.
Since we brought our manufacturing and sourcing back in-house in 2019, we have been strengthening our supply chain monitoring program every year.
We manage 75% of our manufacturing and sourcing through Vivienne Westwood SRL, our sourcing, production and logistics hub based in Milan. There we look after the development, manufacturing and distribution of products worldwide as well as the relationships with suppliers, the majority of whom are located in Italy , followed by Turkey, Portugal, Tunisia and Kenya.
We have 100% visibility of Tier 1 of our Italy-managed supply chain.
The auditing program for our supply chain managed through our Milan hub has been in place since 2019 and helps to measure and monitor the risk of modern slavery, employment standards and environmental risks in our value chain.
70% of our manufacturing suppliers, those we have a direct relationship with, have been audited by an independent third party. The audits include both Workplace Conditions Assessments (WCA) audits by VW SRL and non-WCA audits provided by the supplier. They assess labor conditions, wages and hours, health and safety, management systems and environmental standards.
Thanks to the improvement of the Covid-19 pandemic and the progressive easing of lockdowns and security measures in Italy, in 2021 it was possible to advance with planned audits that had been put “on hold” during 2020.
This in-person audit program has been extended to indirect suppliers, those that our direct suppliers outsource production activities and processes to, so that we can better monitor production-related risks further along our product supply chains.
The remaining 25% of our supply chain is managed through our London-based headquarters.
We have 100% visibility of Tier 1 of our UK-managed supply chain.
The majority of UK-managed key suppliers are located in Thailand and the UK, with one manufacturer located in China. Our audit program has been extended to this UK-managed supply chain in 2022 and so far we have audited 80%.
In 2019, we launched our Modern Slavery suite of documents, which includes our Modern Slavery Policy, our Code of Labor Practice and Business Conduct, Whistleblowing Policy and a Due Diligence Questionnaire. All direct suppliers are required to comply with these standards. We will start extending these policies to our service providers from 2023 onwards. Read more here.