Respecting human rights is a fundamental part of how Superdry does business.
Outlined below is our position on slavery and human trafficking.
This is our fifth Modern Slavery Statement and sets out steps taken by Superdry Plc (which includes its wholly owned subsidiaries C-Retail Limited, DKH Retail Limited and Supergroup Internet Limited) to ensure modern slavery does not take place in any part of our business and supply chain. We have updated our statement with progress made in the last 12 months; our overall modern slavery strategy remains on track.
We review our approach on a regular basis and seek to continually improve through ongoing risk assessment, raising awareness of issues and requirements, and by delivering training to our colleagues and working in partnership with our suppliers and partners.
About Superdry
We design, produce and sell clothing and accessories globally under the Superdry brand.
At Superdry we focus on high quality, contemporary products with a strong link between our brand values and our product attributes: design detail; quality obsession; end-to-end innovation; and affordability.
Our products are:
- Designed at our head office based in the UK.
- Manufactured through third party suppliers globally.
- Sold globally through our stores, through e-commerce sites and through our wholesale customers.
These activities are co-ordinated by a global team of almost 4,676 employees and a network of trusted suppliers and business partners.
About our supply chain
Superdry works with apparel, footwear and accessory suppliers based in the Far East, India, Sri Lanka and EMEA. Our suppliers may choose to use subcontractors (also known as Tier 2) where specialist components are required, or services needed which cannot be completed on these main production sites (Tier 1). Our suppliers’ source branded trims and labels through a network of nominated and sourced suppliers (Tier 3).
We also have a network of suppliers providing services to support day-to-day business operations, examples of which include transportation, warehousing and store ancillary services.
We operate sourcing offices in key source countries, which function to support our suppliers in manufacturing our apparel, footwear and accessories in line with our standards – from quality standards, through to compliance with our ethical standards including our Modern Slavery Policy.
Our commitment to human rights and our Modern Slavery Policy
As an integral part of our commitment to human rights, we actively seek to ensure that our business, business partners and all parts of the associated supply chain are free from all forms of slavery and human trafficking.
Our Modern Slavery Policy applies to all colleagues, suppliers and business partners and requires them to implement effective due diligence processes to enable us to understand and identify the potential risks of slavery and human trafficking so that we can report actual and suspected cases to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.
Our commitment to human rights is further re-enforced through all of our ethical trading policies, which are contained within our supplier manual, and all contracts from 2016 onwards contain a requirement to comply with it.
Our:-
- Ethical trading Code of Practice is based on international standards including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization’s Core Conventions on Labour Standards.
- Migrant and Contract Worker Policy and Guidelines aim to protect vulnerable groups of workers by requiring ethical recruitment practices, appropriate conditions for accommodation, and effective communication of terms and conditions of employment.
- Subcontractor Policy aims to support ongoing mapping of our supply base, and to ensure our standards are actively communicated and supported with this tier and suppliers explicitly seek approval for use of any subcontracted unit. This policy has been rolled out to all suppliers producing Superdry products. Unauthorised subcontracting is prohibited.
All policies have been developed in consultation with organisations including the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), global partners in including Bureau Veritas, and local partners including The Reassurance Network (India, Sri Lanka and Turkey) and Social Compliance Service Asia (Far East). Their ongoing development is managed by our Sustainability and Ethical Trading team, which is overseen by our Executive Committee and Board of Directors.
Since October 2018 we moved from “Improver” to “Achiever” status with the Ethical Trading Initiative’s which recognises our ongoing commitment to human rights and continued advances in our Ethical Trading programme.
How we implement the Modern Slavery Policy
If at any point we suspect or identify any cases of modern slavery, we commit to support the remediation of any victims – working with business partners, other brands, governments and NGOs as applicable. We also commit to assist law enforcement agencies with the investigation, identification and prosecution of any party that knowingly engages in or facilitates slavery or human trafficking.
- Raising awareness for colleagues, suppliers and business partners
Our rolling training programme continues to support our cross business risk assessment and roll-out plan of our Modern Slavery Policy. We continue to prioritise training with all supplier facing colleagues.
- Embedding human rights across our business
Superdry has a well-established global team focused on human rights and wider sustainability. This team manages our ethical trading programme as well as progress towards environmental targets.
We have established a number of mechanisms across our organisation to ensure human rights continue to be embedded in day-to-day business practice:
- We have established robust ethical pre-approval processes for all main factory sites (Tier 1) and subcontracted units (Tier 2) to ensure we continue to work with the best possible partners.
- We regularly audit 100% of main production sites (Tier 1) and their subcontracted units (Tier 2) on a semi-announced and unannounced basis in all territories. In the last 12 months, we have extended our audit processes to nominated or preferred trims and label suppliers (Tier 3) in key source territories.
- We risk assess human rights impacts within our business and supply chain and adapt our programme to ensure any issues are addressed. In the last 12 months, we have successfully reviewed and relaunched our audit programme to promote more accurate risk assessment prioritising a transparent approach with factories.
- We have employed dedicated ethical trading experts, working directly with all suppliers across our Sourcing regions – with full global coverage and visibility of factory conditions. This structure allows us to respond to risks quickly as they emerge, and is critical in negotiating and facilitating transparent risk assessments with factories by building partnerships locally.
- Our dedicated ethical trading experts provide training and support to factories to help remediate issues identified during the risk assessment process. This training and support aims to:-
- Strengthen partnerships within our supply chain,
- Keep our programme relevant and up to date with local best practice, and
- Share solutions to common issues with the aim of resolving them sustainably.
- We will terminate our relationship with any partners that fail to work transparently or outsource our production on an unauthorised basis, remediate severe issues sustainably and/or fail to assist us in supporting identified victims of modern slavery. We take this decision as a last resort, after a period of remediation, support and reassessment and utilise our Responsible Exit policy as required to aid future planning.
- We continue to collaborate alongside other Ethical Trading Initiative members to support the development of best practice guidelines where industry wide risk has been identified.
- Measuring the effectiveness of our ethical trading programme
We monitor the ongoing impacts of our ethical trading programme and report to our Executive Committee and Board of Directors regularly to provide continued oversight.
We continue to update set new targets and monitor ongoing impacts of targets achieved since our first report.
FY | Target | Status |
21 | Equal access to training for Men and Women included in Organic/Transitional Farmer Agronomic training. | Ongoing |
21 | Review Migrant Worker policy to account for new and emerging risks including the use of State run Government training programmes and impacts of COVID-19. Continue to monitor these risks on a local basis with factories and ensure fair and safe conditions. | |
21 | Pilot updated Gender Empowerment programme in India aligned with the UN’S WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLES. | |
20 | Include gender empowerment element into Farmer Engagement and Development programme for Organic Cotton. | Updated see FY21 |
20 | Test and roll out Global Risk Assessment (equivalence)/grading processes for all ethical audits and due diligence processes using Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system. | Complete |
20 | Establish due diligence processes at Spinning Mills utilised for Organic Cotton. | Partially complete – key supply chains only. Review extension in FY21. |
19 | Extend migrant worker assessment to all factories in India employing significant proportion of international migrant workers. | Complete |
19 | Extend Tier 3 monitoring programme to 100% India based trims and labels sites, maintain coverage in Turkey. | Complete |
19 | Complete full end line assessment for gender empowerment work in India and review possibility of extend to over 40% of Indian factory base. | Updated – See FY21. |
19 | Support factory resilience and train all factories to ensure they have sufficient systems to support ethical conditions in Tier 2 and Tier 3 factories. | Complete |
18 | All supplier facing colleagues trained in head office on a rolling basis. | Ongoing |
18 | Maintain ethical approval and monitoring processes for 100% of main production sites (Tier 1) and continue roll-out to achieve 100% for all subcontracted units (Tier 2). | Complete |
The above statement has been made pursuant to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010 (SB657) and has been approved by Superdry’s Board of Directors. The statement is signed by Julian Dunkerton, Chief Executive Officer, Superdry Plc (formerly SuperGroup Plc), on 16th July 2020.
How we ensure that our business, business partners and associated supply chains are free from all forms of slavery and human trafficking.