California Apparel News

Denim and garment manufacturer Artistic Milliners and blockchain-based supply-chain management-solutions provider Retraced have announced a partnership that will afford greater cotton traceability. Focused on generating transparency surrounding Artistic Milliners’ Milliner Cotton Initiative, the project will transition more than 500 cotton farmers from Pakistan’s Rahim Yar Khan region into a more digitalized environment to safeguard equitable compensation for its quality product. Set within a real-time tracking system to follow the journey of cotton from the farm through the factory and into fashion, the project affords detailed insight into the cotton life cycle within the supply chain for brands and consumers.

“Transparency in cotton supply chains is a long-overdue and necessary basis for ethical supply-chain management, environmental sustainability and circularity. Often, cotton from up to 1,000 farmers from different continents are mixed in one single pair of jeans. And little is known about who, where and what happens. Traceability is an industrywide challenge, and only with a platform that connects everyone can we address that,” said Lukas Pünder, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Düsseldorf, Germany–based Retraced. “With the Artistic Milliners MCI project, we are implementing real-time fiber tracing the way it should be—from the bottom up— following the natural flow of the material. The objective of this project has to be to create the blueprint for fully digitalized traceability. It’s an exciting development for fashion.”

As part of the longstanding commitment of Karachi, Pakistan’s Artistic Milliners to ethics and sustainability, this latest progressive step speaks to the original mission of the MCI program, which was implemented in 2019 to support the cotton trade in Pakistan and ensure quality of product while working with the World Wildlife Fund to ensure fair practices for farmers. Built upon Oracle’s Blockchain Cloud with Autonomous’s infrastructure, Retraced’s application will be able to be accessed by all stakeholders including farmers, who will use the technology to guide them through cotton sowing, picking and shipment to the ginner, which will also be equipped with the program. Tracing will continue during Artistic Milliners’ spinning, dyeing, weaving and cutting processes, allowing brands to utilize this information to inform customers.

“Transparency and accountability across the supply chain are the need of the hour and something we at AM take seriously. Our ambition is to have complete traceability from farm to fashion. Considering the magnitude of this project, we had to make sure that we linked up with the right company,” said Omer Ahmed, CEO of Artistic Milliners. “After careful deliberation, we chose to partner with Retraced. Retraced is a dynamic blockchain company run by highly capable individuals. We are working hand in glove with them to launch a traceability interface that is user-friendly and one that we hope will eventually become the most widely adopted by our fellow suppliers as well as our brand partners.”