Enabling and Amplifying Governance over the Supply Chain: Bsamply and Deda Stealth

With Bsamply, Dedagroup Stealth enables and amplifies its governance over the supply chain, in line with the new ESG logic. 

Luca Tonello, General Manager of Dedagroup Stealth

Just a few weeks ago, the Fashion Climate Fund was launched, a 250 million-dollar fund dedicated to investments in solutions aimed at creating a supply chain with reduced carbon emissions in the fashion industry. Among the first to finance this fund are Lululemon Athletica and Schmidt Family Foundation (a private foundation founded in 2016 by Eric Schmidt, executive president of Google, and his wife Wendy Schmidt, to tackle questions relating to sustainability and the responsible use of natural recourses.) 

The need for a more sustainable and ESG-compliant supply chain is taking hold in the Fashion market and can be today considered a vital component of company strategies.  

Driven by this context described just above, companies in fashion are becoming more and more aware of the need to manage the supply chain in an extended way in order to increase transparency- particularly in relation to sustainability- and reactivity.   

According to McKinsey and BoF’s annual report “The state of Fashion 2022”, the difficulties encountered in this period are in fact for businesses in fashion, but an opportunity to deeply rethink their processes: reforming the structure of their supply chain and implementing increasingly extensive management of it, thus making it more flexible and resilient thanks to digitization and finally, allowing greater control over real-time data and a centralized integration and orchestration of the various flows. 

There is no doubt in saying Stella McCartney can be considered one of the virtuous examples of ESG that goes way back. “the extended management of the value chain enables greater business flexibility and responsiveness to the needs emerging from the market-, comments Luca Malacarne, CIO of Stella McCartney, during our last Stealth Day 2022. – Digital technologies are fundamental for implementing an effective and ecological supply chain: having a solid and well-functioning ERP has a great positive impact on daily work; today we have uniform nomenclatures, greater simplicity, agility, and adequacy in business processes, less manual intervention, and better cost control.”  

Its not a coincidence the brand recently launched a collaboration with Google and WWF – introducing an application that allows Fashion companies to monitor their environmental impact based on the procurement of their raw materials.  

“By 2030, fashion value chains will need to be transparent and traceable“, comments Francesca Romana Rinaldi, Professor at SDA Bocconi and Author of “Fashion 2030: Reshaping the Future through Sustainability and Responsible Innovation”, where she sustains the need for a radical and immediate change both in the supply and in the demand. ‘’The fashion value chains will be traceable and transparent, they will face challenges regarding the mapping of supply chains worldwide and in sharing content that shows what exactly stands behind each product, even though potential smart tags,’’ she adds.  

Digitalization and technology to support sustainable standards in fashion 

Another extremely relevant theme discussed by the McKinsey report that can contribute to a sustainable supply chain is the possibility to institutionalize ‘’ product passports’’ that contain data relating to how the product came to be and its environmental impact. Digitalization will be a fundamental leverage in this case: on one end it will be important to supply the required transparency across the entire value chain, and on the other, make this data and information easily accessible to consumers.  

This scenario however also provides the sector with an opportunity that can’t be turned down: defining common procedures and standards for certifying sustainability in fabrics, collaborating on both a supply chain and a district level, and leveraging on the experience and excellence of Italian manufacturers. This allows us to ensure further momentum and relevance in the sustainable Made in Italy know-how, in addition to providing a noteworthy competitive advantage towards brand clients and final consumers.  

Fundamental to implementing sustainable supply chain models are digital and technology. Being able to disseminate all necessary information in real-time, in coordination with the different sectors involved, allows companies to make decisions that are optimized from the point of view of quality and that are responsible from the point of view of environment and society.  

The acquisition of Bsamply for an extended and sustainable supply chain 

Our recent acquisition of the startup, Bsamply goes exactly in this direction. The platform promotes digitalization in the raw material industry and was born to facilitate the connection between suppliers of raw materials (from textiles to yarns and leathers to accessories) and brands in fashion and interior design. 

To understand why we specifically chose Bsamply, you just need to listen to the story of its founder, Andrea Fiume, part of a family that has worked in the textile industry for over four generations: ‘’Bsamply was born in LA 5 years ago and allows brands to scout raw materials and track the order process, and suppliers to create digital showrooms brands can request samples from’’ he says. ‘’ I was born into a family of textile entrepreneurs on my mother’s side and a sportswear brand on my father’s, this is why I found myself completely in the middle between the two sides, the buyers and the sellers. I also started working in the industry in 2006, at times when nobody was yet talking about sustainability, at Lifegate I created a line of eco-friendly jeans. It was during this time that I started asking myself how can we make the supply chain more cost-effective and sustainable. So I began thinking about digitalizing it.” 

Entering Dedagroup Stealth and fully integrating into its ecosystem will allow Bsamply to become a genuine Hub, through which its suppliers, many of which are iconic companies in the world of fashion will be able to showcase their products following rigorous standards of transparency to the 8 thousand users of the platform, accelerating in this way their growth and innovation. Brands will be able to choose which realities best fit their needs, even from an ESG perspective. An important new part that goes with the new direction Dedagoup Stealth is taking for a more and more extended supply chain, keeping close to mind traceability and sustainability. 

Article by Luca Tonello, General Manager, Dedagroup Stealth