COPENHAGEN – Danish fashion retailer Bestseller has launched a major new sustainability programme with circularity, climate pledges and CSR issues at its core. The business, which owns and operates around 2,700 retail stores globally and has made huge inroads in the Chinese market, suggests the strategy aims to “make sustainability central to its way of doing business.”
The ‘Fashion FWD’ strategy is based on “becoming as sustainable as possible, as soon as possible,” across four focus areas covering Bestseller’s value chain: Creating FWD, Making FWD, Engaging FWD and Delivering FWD.
Creating FWD is about working with innovative new fibres and sustainable materials; Making FWD is about improving the environmental footprint of products, supply chain and operations; Engaging FWD is an approach to embed human rights in the fashion industry supply chain; and Delivering FWD is about a future circular model for fashion.
Each of these focus areas include specific, measurable goals for the period of 2019-2025.
“Our strengths as a business are our agility and responsiveness to trends. We will apply these strengths to respond to the changing demands of our planet and society, and to speed up our transition to a more sustainable reality,” said Bestseller CEO and owner Anders Holch Povlsen.
“By preserving our climate, using resources efficiently and promoting human rights, business can be a positive force for change. We want to play a significant role in overcoming the biggest sustainability challenges and we see sustainability as a prerequisite for ongoing business success. Building on some good progress to date, we are now speeding up our efforts,” he added.
“Our ambition commits us to bring fashion forward until we are climate positive, fair for all and circular by design,” Bestseller’s head of corporate affairs Dorthe Scherling Nielsen added.
“Climate positive means that we will remove more emissions than we emit. Fair for all means that we will promote equality, dignity and safe working conditions for all, and circular by design means that we will turn waste into a valuable resource throughout our value chain.”
“This is a significant moment for our company as we place sustainability at the core of our business. At the same time, we are fully aware of the magnitude of the challenge ahead. Without industry collaboration and the support of our business partners, we will not get there.”
