September 8, 2021
Santa Cruz, CA
SupplyShift announced today that the platform will host Fast Forward, a next-generation labor standards improvement program for consumer goods and retail supply chains.
Fast Forward has spent the last half decade quietly revolutionizing the social auditing process. Grown out of a pilot with UK fashion retailers New Look, ASOS and River Island in 2014 to address concerns of exploitative practices in UK fashion manufacturing going undetected by existing audits, Fast Forward has proven an effective methodology to uncover hidden worker exploitation. Since then, more than 25 fashion and homewares brands and retailers have joined the program, valuing not only the forensic auditing methodology but also the package of support to help suppliers to continuously improve, through training, guidance, resources and visibility to an ever-growing customer base committed to building ethical supply chains.
The partnership with SupplyShift marks the next phase of the program’s continuing development, enabling greater transparency, easy data aggregation and sharing, enhanced risk and trends analysis, and greater collaboration with peers on remediation. Whilst the core membership resides in fashion and homewares retailing, the program works for all suppliers, in all sectors, and at any stage of social compliance maturity.
“We created Fast Forward out of a widely-expressed concern that existing methodologies weren’t uncovering prevalent social issues in supply chains,” said Hannah Newcomb, Managing Director of Fast Forward. “We started seeing a lot of success with the framework, but realized we needed technology to help our members scale their efforts. SupplyShift has provided that technology, and will be instrumental in making Fast Forward more transparent, collaborative, and scalable.”
“Partnering with Fast Forward was an obvious move for SupplyShift. They have surfaced as the industry-standard auditing methodology for the UK, with great opportunities to adapt and contextualize into other regions and sectors,” says Laura Haworth, Head of Social Responsibility and UK Operations at SupplyShift. “By driving collaboration and enabling members to do more with data, we’ve made risk identification that much easier, so companies can put more attention toward fixing issues on the ground.”
Fast Forward’s partnership with SupplyShift will greatly improve the transparency & data management solutions it can offer to its Brand members, helping them better engage with social compliance issues in their supply chains. It will also provide the opportunity for suppliers in the program to actively manage any improvement actions arising from their audits, demonstrate progress and benchmark against peers.
To learn more about SupplyShift’s work with Fast Forward, click here.
To learn more about the Fast Forward program, click here.
About Fast Forward
Fast Forward is a not-for-profit, next generation labour standards improvement programme. Fast Forward uniquely combines a proven forensic auditing methodology with a collaborative beyond audit programme to support suppliers and brands to continuously improve.
Fast Forward was developed together with apparel retailers in 2014 to address concerns of worker exploitation in UK fashion manufacturing being undetected by existing social compliance audits. Proven as an effective methodology to uncover exploitative practices and drive continuous improvement, this collaborative programme is operated by an ever-growing number of brands and retailers in a range of UK sectors.
About SupplyShift
SupplyShift is the supply chain sustainability platform for creating more transparent, lower risk, higher-performing supply chains. Engage, assess, and collaborate with suppliers in a single platform, unifying your data to uncover insights and take action toward your supply chain sustainability goals.
Join a network of over 90,000 businesses driving supply chain sustainability at supplyshift.net.
Contact:
SupplyShift
Matt Gottron
Senior Marketing Manager
Fast Forward
Hannah Newcomb
Managing Director
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