Lack of Supplier Relationship Management brings Zara under fire.

Reports from large sources, such as Newsweek, have made accusations of Spanish apparel-superpower, Zara, for not paying their workers. This has sparked an outrage from stakeholders and human right’s champions alike.

Managing supplier relationships - and assuring procurement and sourcing activities are completed with ethics in mind – is more crucial now than ever before. Textile industries globally have come under fire, as stakeholder visibility is at an all-time high through technological advancements. Yet still, some of the world’s largest brands still lack transparency into their own procurement and sourcing.

“Unlike most apparel companies, Zara for years had eschewed sourcing clothing from factories that they did not own in Asian countries as far away as Bangladesh to Vietnam. The retailer (and its parent company, Inditex) long stood out for being vertically integrated” (Kaye 2017).

For a long time, this model has given Zara a unique competitive advantage when it comes to reduction of lead times in production and delivery to retailers. But, as the company’s growth has materialized they’ve been forced to reallocate the production of their clothing to various contracted entities.

“According to the Associated Press, one of those factories, owned by a Turkish company named Bravo, has been accused of not paying its employees on time, if at all” (Kaye 2017).

Lack of relationship management involving these external entities has landed Zara in the hotseat yet again. Mother company to Zara, Inditex, has recently entered into an agreement with the ILO (Interntional Labor Organization) to build “best practices” amongst it’s factories and their labor conditions. Yet just a month or so later, these accusations have come to the surface. 

As reported by triplepundit.com, neither Zara nor Inditex have made any public statement regarding the accusations of its operations within the Bravo factories.

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