Y.a.s.

How sustainable is Y.A.S.?

Y.A.S. is a Scan­di­na­vian modern fema­le fast fashion brand. The brand is part of Bestseller.

Bes­tse­ller is a Danish family-owned clothing brand that has grown into a fast fashion giant sin­ce its foun­ding in 1975. The com­pany employs over 41,000 peo­ple and offers its four­teen brands in over 5,300 sto­res in 43 coun­tries. With such a big name in the industry, comes big res­pon­si­bi­lity. It’s very unfor­tu­na­te that this res­pon­si­bi­lity is not being taken at the moment. The mother com­pany offers a sin­gle sus­tai­na­bi­lity report that covers all of its nearly twenty brands. This report is mainly filled with frag­men­ted infor­ma­tion about what spe­ci­fic brands do well, but lacks a gene­ral repre­sen­ta­tion of the per­for­man­ce of either the mother com­pany or the indi­vi­dual brands on sus­tai­na­ble prac­ti­ses. This makes it nearly impos­si­ble to gain insight into how the com­pany is doing and what it is actually imple­men­ting. The com­pany has made small steps by imple­men­ting a Code of Con­duct to ensu­re basic labor rights and publishing a list of sup­pliers, but infor­ma­tion about its car­bon foot­print, mate­rial sour­cing, wor­kers’ rights or ani­mal wel­fa­re is mostly missing.

When a brand doesn’t offer any infor­ma­tion, the­re are seve­ral risks you take as a con­su­mer. For exam­ple, the cli­ma­te impact of that par­ti­cu­lar brand or pro­duct can be much higher com­pa­red to industry peers. The com­pany might use cer­tain harm­ful che­mi­cals or the­re might be ani­mals or humans har­med for the manu­fac­tu­ring of the pro­duct. For the­se reasons, we belie­ve that you should be awa­re of how pro­ducts are pro­du­ced and how a com­pany as a who­le ope­ra­tes in regard to our pillars. When there’s no trans­pa­rency, you are at risk of sup­por­ting some or more of the harm­ful con­di­tions men­tio­ned above.