Superdry

How sustainable is Superdry?

This scree­ning has been done by Fai­ri­fy on July 14^th 2020

Super­dry is a Bri­tish fashion brand with a glo­bal pre­sence. The brand is known for its com­bi­ning of Wes­tern desi­gn with Japa­nese cha­rac­ters. The com­pa­ny publishes an annual report that includes its sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty jour­ney, but fails to report on the num­bers that matter.

This becomes pain­ful­ly clear on the topic of cli­mate action. The com­pa­ny pre­tends like it’s doing great and reduces its emis­sions on an annual basis. But when we zoom in on the topic, it becomes appa­rent that the com­pa­ny doesn’t include impor­tant ele­ments, like mate­rial sour­cing and emis­sions gene­ra­ted in its pro­duc­tion faci­li­ties. These figures gene­ral­ly make up about at least more than half, but honest­ly clo­ser to 90%, of total emis­sions that fashion com­pa­nies gene­rate. What’s even worse, there are no signi­fi­cant tar­gets for improvement.

This way of repor­ting is more rule than excep­tion in Superdry’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Mate­rial ori­gins, inclu­ding ani­mal-deri­ved mate­rials, are almost com­ple­te­ly unk­nown. Its sup­ply chain map doesn’t lack inter­ac­tive desi­gn, but we would’ve rather seen a simple spread­sheet that actual­ly includes a fac­to­ry-spe­ci­fic list. The list goes on.

Never­the­less, the com­pa­ny has adop­ted a sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty jour­ney. The tar­gets Super­dry has set as part of this jour­ney include 100% rene­wable elec­tri­ci­ty and orga­nic cot­ton by 2040. Taking 20 years to achieve these, where most com­pa­nies aim for 2030 latest, lacks serious ambi­tion and doesn’t show any pro­mise that this com­pa­ny will change for the bet­ter any­time soon. Orga­nic cot­ton is cur­rent­ly at a mere 5.4% and has an inter­me­diate tar­get of 10% by 2025. Labor rights are wor­ri­some as well. Social audits do hap­pen, but Super­dry doesn’t spe­ci­fy who conducts the audits, at what fre­quen­cy they’re per­for­med and what the results are.

Conclu­si­ve­ly, Super­dry is a very unsus­tai­nable com­pa­ny that tries to make up for it by pre­ten­ding to be more sus­tai­nable than it actual­ly is. To find any rele­vant infor­ma­tion in its repor­ting is a real chore and even seems deli­be­ra­te­ly mis­lea­ding at times. The com­bi­na­tion of this repor­ting style and the lack of ambi­tion, action and trans­pa­ren­cy, doesn’t ali­gn with the public image that the com­pa­ny broad­casts and that’s very worrisome.

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 its indus­try peers. The com­pa­ny might use cer­tain harm­ful che­mi­cals or there might be ani­mals or humans har­med for the manu­fac­tu­ring of its pro­ducts. 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 pre­vious­ly men­tio­ned harm­ful conditions.

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