Welcome to Executive Action Items, a Glossy+ member-exclusive series driven by monthly focus groups with subject matter experts. The bi-weekly series offers immediately actionable takeaways for workers navigating the rapidly evolving beauty and fashion industries.
This month, Glossy brought together a group of executives from fashion and beauty to talk about challenges to supply chain management. The executives compared notes on topics like navigating tariffs, vetting manufacturing partners, and dealing with the complexity of international shipping and fulfillment. Below is a recap of the part of the discussion focused on vetting manufacturing partners, sourcing materials and dealing with the complexities of a large international supply chain.
Focus group members:
Jessica Roberti, the chief supply chain officer of the New York-based fashion brand Marcella. Roberti has experience at major apparel companies like Alo Yoga and American Eagle Outfitters, overseeing areas like product development, supply chain management and sourcing.
Annie Jackson, the co-founder and CEO of beauty retailer Credo Beauty. Credo Beauty sells products from hundreds of brands, works with partners internationally and makes its own line of beauty products with a focus on ethical manufacturing practices.
Vicki von Holzhausen, the founder of the material science company Von Holzhausen. She has a background as an auto designer before founding her eponymous company which develops materials like a 100% plant-based plastic. Von Holzhausen also makes its own products, like handbags and other accessories, from its own materials.
Vetting your supply chain partners
Running an international business means bringing a lot of other people into the mix. All but the biggest brands have to rely on external manufacturers, external suppliers and external shipping partners. Working with someone outside the company always brings an element of uncertainty, but there are ways to mitigate the risk.
Von Holzhausen: “You need scorecards. You need a real robust rubric, a vetting system for your partners. And honestly, what we do is we have to be three-deep. We have three partners lined up in Mexico, three in China and three in the U.S. We’re not really doing that in Europe just yet because there’s so much to do in Asia, Mexico and the U.S. But we try to have a bench of players so that we’re always prepared. Because the manufacturers and shippers, they have issues, too. So when an issue comes up, you’re like ‘Okay, what’s my second line here?’ It’s about constant research and constant interviews, meeting with people every week.”
Jackson: “We had a pretty horrible move to a 3PL [third-party logistics provider]. You’ve all heard the horror stories, and we were one of them. For two years, we were completely, and I mean completely, paralyzed — not able to get merchandise out in an effective way, no transparency to inventory, etc. Vicki [von Holzhausen] is right. You have to constantly be evaluating other partners and have someone in your back pocket. What the last 10 years have taught me about growing this business is – and it sounds terrible – you have to plan for the worst case scenario so you can quickly move to something else.”
Von Holzhausen: “Sometimes we have meetings with new partners just to vet them and get them on a list. Then we start small projects with them just to feel them out. That’s because it’s a constant churn with what’s happening in the world and because the speed of things is not going to change. And when unexpected roadblocks come up, you either die or you catch up.”
Roberti: “I’m used to spending time in the factories and the mills. When I worked at Abercrombie & Fitch, I traveled 75% of the time. Wherever stuff is being made, you should spend time there and meet the team. We have a mill in Greece that makes 50% of our fabric. It’s a three-hour drive from Sofia, Bulgaria [where Marcella is located], and no one had ever been to visit the mill. I was like, ‘Get in the car. We’re driving there today. We’ll leave at 6:30 in the morning. I’ll drive. We’ll tour the place, and we’ll be back by the end of the day.’”
Making supply chain changes
Jackson: “With a lot of what we make, you have to get to a certain unit count before we can afford to manufacture it. We’ve thought about moving our production to the U.S. to avoid tariffs, but the nice thing about Canada is that our partners there do really small runs for us. We’re trying to keep all our brands at Credo, and we only have 15 stores. So our Canadian manufacturers will do 12 pieces of something and 50 of another, and that’s really helpful. It’s hard to think about leaving.”
Roberti: “When I joined the company, I said, ‘Let’s talk about the vendors. Who do we want to grow? Who do we want to maintain? Who do we want to decrease or exit? Let’s pull all the data for the last two years and look at what we have ordered, and let’s review. Every month.” The team was a little confused at first. They were like, ‘Who’s this crazy woman?’ But it’s starting to click, and now we’re doing those monthly reviews with all of our fabric.”
Jackson: “Changing part of your supply chain can also cause a lot of headaches. All of our packaging was from Asia, and I remember that, at one point during Covid, we couldn’t get bottles anymore. There was a long lead time, we were struggling to figure out how to balance stuff and we ended up having to change our bottles. It changed the size of the bottle from 120 milliliters to 115. It’s a small change, but it meant we had to redo all of our art and redo all of our boxes. It was a lot of heavy lifting.”
