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The modern garment supply chain is immensely complex and conventional “Made In” labels offer a dangerously simplified truth. Instead, we trace every step of our garments’ creation, from farm to finish line, so that both we at ASKET, and you as an individual, can make informed decisions about the clothing we choose to invest in. The journey started in May 2018, and while we failed our ambitious goal to be 100% traceable by 2019, we’re getting closer every month. In 2021 we made big leaps, going from 85% to 92,5% traceability across the board.
Follow along as we trace our entire collection, from farm to finished garment.
Overall product traceability
Last calculation: 2022-08-08
Full Traceability is our transparency standard, requiring us to identify and break out every unique process in the creation of our garments and the exact location of the farms, plants, factories and facilities at which these processes are carried out. We trace our garments by traveling and visiting manufacturers, mills and farms across the world or by issuing questionnaires and collecting verified certificates. Manufacturing and Milling facilities are always visited personally and you can explore them on our Factory Pages here as well as on every product page where we list all documented factories involved in the product. No matter how far we’ve traced a garment, we provide everything we know - and everything we don’t - right here at asket.com and on the Full Traceability label sewn into every garment.
To track our progress, we’ve developed a traceability score, tracking the garments’ major components across the three main tiers of their creation: Manufacturing, Milling and Raw Materials. All minor components (buttons, hardware, sewing thread) are grouped in a fourth tier: Trims. Each garment and its components is then split into the individual sub-processes within these four tiers. For instance a fabric’s milling tier can consist of yarn twisting, spinning, dying, fabric weaving and finishing. Up to six processes, per component and tier, that are traced and rated according to how much we know of the subprocess. Finally, we weight and sum it all up to arrive at our traceability score.
With about 40 unique garments in our permanent collection, there are close to 1000 processes and locations, spread across the whole world, that we’re tracking down - a nearly impossible task. To put our work and knowledge into perspective, a 2018 study found that 30% of brands don’t know where their clothes are manufactured, 82% don’t know where their fabrics are milled and 93% don’t know where their raw materials come from. With our scoring system, that puts the industry at just 28% traceability.
Within the tiers Raw Material, Milling and Manufacturing, we give each process 1/3 point if we know the country, 2/3 if we know the region/city and 3/3 (100%) if we know the farm/factory/plant location. Within Trims, we score 100% if we know the region/city, since these components are far smaller and contribute to a much smaller part of the garments footprint.
Then, we sum up every process score per tier, and weight it according to the below percentages to arrive at a garments traceability score.
Raw Material (30%), tier 3, is the starting point of a garment: the cotton farm, or the wool sheep that yield our precious raw material. It’s intense in labor and use of soil, water and pesticides so we want to know that human and natural resources are taken care of. When it comes to wool, animal welfare and ethical practices, such as non-mulesing, are of great importance.
Milling (30%), tier 2, is the creation of the main fabric from raw materials such as wool or cotton: combing, spinning, twisting, dying, weaving, finishing. These processes are energy, water and chemical intense, so we want to know that energy is clean, water is recycled and chemicals are safe.
Manufacturing (30%), tier 1, includes all steps from fabric to final garment: cutting, sewing, washing, pressing and packing. It’s the most labor intense part of a garment’s journey, which is why we want to know the working conditions and visit all manufacturing facilities in person.
Trims (10%), normally refer to the remaining components of a garment: Sewing thread, labels, hangtags, buttons and zips. To allocate our tracing efforts according to the importance of a component, we also include garment lining, so long as it’s a small proportion of all fabric used.
Manufacturing 30% + Milling 30% + Raw material 30% + Trims 10% = 100% Traceability.
As per our Principles, all Manufacturing and Milling facilities are visited and documented personally. That means we can show off our amazing factory partners and give you a glimpse at what it takes to create garments free of compromise. Below is just a fraction of our factories, head to our factories page to view all of them,
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