Social Responsibility »  Ethical Sourcing »  Maintaining a sustainable supply chain

Maintaining a sustainable supply chain

In 2008 we focused on the following objectives:

• All our suppliers producing private/captive branded participate in Hudson’s Bay Company’s social compliance program
• To ensure social compliance is integrated into our core business decisions and operations
• To induce change/improvement within factories and collaborate with other stakeholders where possible

In 2008 we changed how we review and assess suppliers, and how we communicate those results back to the business.

• We stopped prioritizing our suppliers based on their historical, existing, or new business relationship with Hudson’s Bay Company.
• We changed our internal policy and process to include a clause related to social compliance within all merchant documents.
• We created a social compliance section on our internal website. Now all associates within Hudson’s Bay Company can easily find out a supplier’s social compliance status.

In keeping with the Global Mind principles, the key to maintaining a sustainable supply is to ensure clear communications with all stakeholders who are part of the supply chain. The social compliance program is focused on ensuring factories operate in a sustainable manner, and on improving their sustainable practices over time.

The chart below illustrates the main issues found in our factories for the past 3 years.

Number of factories audited in 2008: