About Sustaining Voices
Sourcing Journal’s Sustaining Voices celebrates the efforts the apparel industry is making toward securing a more environmentally responsible future through creative innovations, scalable solutions and forward-thinking initiatives that are spinning intent into action.
Overview
The Open Apparel Registry is making it easier for the apparel industry to share data, improve efficiencies and increase collaboration.
Deep Dive
The apparel industry isn’t known for its transparency, so campaigns aimed at improving visibility often do the bare minimum, leading to accusations of sector-wide greenwashing. The Open Apparel Registry (OAR) isn’t one of those halfway-there initiatives. Launched in March, it's an open-source tool that brings a new degree of transparency to the garment sector by identifying the names, addresses and affiliations of more than 10,000 factories and mills worldwide.
The registry has been decades in the making, according to Natalie Grillon, its project director.
“The OAR's ability to standardize factory names and addresses and provide a unique ID didn't come from one idea or one person,” said Grillon. “It has been a long-standing need in the industry, identified by brands, factories and multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI) over time.”
As such, the OAR is headed by a board of directors from civil society, the open-data sector, factory groups, industry MSIs and brands, rather than one company or interest group. It was developed by software firm Azavea (a certified B Corporation) and funded by C&A Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Belgium- and Germany-based retailer C&A.
“This is precompetitive information that helps the entire industry,” Grillon said. “Therefore it's important for it to be a shared public resource and governed as such to represent the diverse interests of all users who contribute to and use the platform.”
Free to use, the OAR is a collated database of disparate supplier lists powered by advanced name- and address-matching algorithms. Its capabilities are robust: Users can check and update facility names and addresses; research affiliations of current and prospective facilities; seek out potential new suppliers; and leverage the OAR ID across software systems and databases to create a level of standardization hitherto lacking in the sector.
Grillon said the OAR has received positive feedback in the time since its debut, though it will continue to roll out several functional updates over time, including continuous improvement of the algorithm.
“We've largely received encouragement and helpful feedback as stakeholders recognize we are addressing an industry-wide need with an industry public good,” she said.
In what areas has the fashion industry made the biggest strides in sustainability in the last five years?
“It's encouraging to see greater transparency in industry data, but I'd like to see it as more of a shift toward principles of open data, where the data and information being shared is done so in a manner where it is useable and collaborative.”