Why is CMC relevant? Why is digitization needed? What problem is CMC solving?
 

In this context, brands are pressured by the consumers and the regulatory bodies to make specific and backed up material claims, which means that they need to collect the relevant certificates as a proof of their certified material claims. 

The objective is clear, but then, why is a solution like CMC relevant for brands? 

The fashion supply chains are especially complex and tracing the material from fibre to brand is very challenging and time consuming. Given that most product are multi-component products, composed of a variety of materials and trims, it makes it even harder for brands to provide relevant and specific information on the final product. 

Now that brands are pushed to make certified material claims, they need to collect all the relevant evidence to be able to back them up. In this endeavor, brands face three main obstacles: 

Lack of visibility

Brands often lack visibility on their suppliers beyond their finished goods suppliers (Tier 1). This means that they don’t have reliable communication channels with their fabric or yarn suppliers to collect important documentation (SC, TC, Country of origin, declarations etc.). Brands are thus left in a relatively vulnerable position, especially when it comes to making compliant product claims. 

Linking a proof to product 

To make certified material claims, brands need to be able to find, organize and gather all the certificates concerning a specific product/material and be able to link this evidence to the corresponding purchase order. As of now, the certificates that constitute the “Document-based Chain of Custody” are not automatically stored in an organized way, representing the different steps of the supply chain for each product. Brands receive all these certificates and must manually collect them and link them with the corresponding PO, checking that the different fields are compliant. Proving compliance and backing up a claim thus becomes very resource intensive as brands need to go back in time to find the right certificate at the moment of proving a specific sustainability claim. 

Manual work and lack of IT readiness

This process of gathering, linking and verifying certified material evidence is very laborious work. But if we look at enterprise brands that manage millions of POs per year, then the amount of work becomes unmanageable. In many cases, the different data points to be checked are distributed throughout various IT systems from the brand, making the manual reconciliation even more arduous. Managing massive quantities of unstructured information may also lead to errors and is not scalable. 

Incomplete Document-based CoC

According to the rules for certified materials, a claim cannot be made on the end product if the finished good is not certified, meaning if the finished good does not carry a transaction certificate. Unfortunately, it happens frequently that a brand does not have the finished good TC. In this case, even if all the previous stages are completed, brands cannot make claims on the end product.