We carefully choose who we work with and have strict requirements in terms of certifications, location, and the need for our suppliers to live up to leading social and environmental standards within the garment industry. We have yearly supplier conversations, meet with and visit as many of our suppliers as we can, and we are continuously working to improve the transparency of our supply chain.
Supply chains can be long and sometimes murky to get a full overview of. From the design idea to the final product, a lot of steps have to be completed. Once designs are drawn, then fabrics are chosen and then cut and sewn, but that’s just three steps in the process. Before fabric is fabric, it is yarn, and before that, it is fibres, and there are people and environment to consider at all of these levels. Below we’ll dig into the different supply chain tiers and how they play out in relation to Hala’s products.
Tier 1: Manufacturing & garment producers
This supplier is where our underwear is cut and sewn into the final product. The manufacturer of our underwear is a family-owned factory in Morocco. We visit them regularly – last time in December 2023. They are BSCI-audited (rated A) and also GRS-certified.*
We do not allow outsourcing of the manufacturing of our products to subcontractors, which is included in our code of conduct and our collaboration agreement with our manufacturer. Subcontracting is quite common. Typically it happens due to capacity needs, but it can also be due to the need for capabilities the contracted factory does not have. We have made a strong stand to not have our underwear made in a subcontracted facility, as we want to be completely certain of the production standards and ethics.
*The Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) is an industry-driven non-profit movement that helps a business (in this case: the factory we work with) monitor its supply chain to ensure that all suppliers are treating workers in accordance with national and international law. The Global Recycle Standard (GRS) is an international, voluntary, full product standard that sets requirements for third-party certification of recycled content, chain of custody, social and environmental practices and chemical restrictions.
Tier 2: Fabric & material producers
These suppliers are making the fabrics we use, and they are all located in Turkey and Spain. We source some of our fabrics directly from the fabric manufacturer, and the remaining of our fabrics via a French supplier.
Building relationships directly with our material suppliers is important to us. They are the experts, and we need quite specific functionalities for our materials to ensure good absorbency and no leakages. Having a good collaboration and partnership is crucial as it enables us to test and develop the right materials together. We meet with the suppliers at trade fairs and are also planning to visit their factories as soon as we can.
Tier 3: Yarn producers
These suppliers are producing the yarns that Tier 2 suppliers use to knit the fabrics. Tier 2 and Tier 3 producers are sometimes the same manufacturer as is the case with some of our fabrics. Our TENCEL™ micromodal is an example of yarn that is produced by the yarn company Lenzing, which is then sent to one of the Tier 2 producers we work with who knit the TENCEL™ yarn into the fabric we use in our underwear.
Tier 4: Fibre producers
These suppliers are making the fibres for the yarn production. This includes the farmers that grow and harvest cotton and hemp plants. The cotton we use is certified organic and grown in Turkey, and the hemp is grown in Belgium.
Lenzing is a company that is both in Tier 3 and Tier 4. They extract the TENCEL™ Modal fibres from naturally grown beech wood – sourced from certified forests in Austria and neighbouring countries – through an environmentally certified integrated pulp-to-fibre process, which is self-sufficient in energy and recovers co-products from component parts of the wood. There is a lot of modal fabric being produced, but it was important for us to work with TENCEL™ made by either Lenzing or Birla to ensure a closed-loop manufacturing process with high environmental standards.
Polyester and elastane are synthetic fibres that are made from melted plastic (yup!). We are only using the absolute minimum of synthetic fibres and only when they have a functional role to play, such as the film-laminated polyester fabric (PUL) that ensures leakproofness, as well as elastane in our shell fabric which ensures that you can wear and wash your underwear again and again without it losing its fit and comfort.
Locations
It has been an active choice from day 1 that as many of our suppliers as possible, and as a minimum our Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, must be based in Europe and South West Asia & North Africa (SWANA/MENA) for two main reasons: 1) to minimise transportation distances and hence unnecessary climate impact, and 2) to be able to visit the suppliers more easily and get a closer partnership and a better understanding of the manufacturing process.
