Asia Garment Hub

Why true collaboration is the key to fashion industry change (and why it isn’t happening enough)

What two decades of experience and new research reveal about the challenges of collaboration in fashion - and the role of the Asia Garment Hub in bringing the industry together.

Back in 2004, we convened the first round table for the Ethical Fashion Forum (EFF) (the precursor to Common Objective), bringing together 19 passionate business owners from brands and suppliers. These pioneers were part of the first wave - catalysts of the then nascent sustainable fashion movement. Despite the optimism in the room, none of us were under the illusion that we could drive meaningful change across this industry - already one of excess - alone. The point of the EFF was that we all agreed we could overcome the challenges we faced more easily by joining forces.

More than 20 years later, and after trying almost everything else, I am more convinced than ever that collaboration is the key to change. Yet so little of these decades of graft have involved the actual work of collaboration - bringing people and organisations together to work strategically towards systems change. Why?

In 2023 we joined forces with the UN Global Compact Network UK, and with the support of two leading sustainable suppliers - PDS Ltd and ITL Group - launched a research project with the goal of answering this question. We mapped 57 initiatives operating to further sustainable and ethical practices in the fashion industry (including the Clean Clothes Campaign, Fair Wear Foundation, Textile Exchange, Fashion Takes Action, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Better Cotton Initiative, Apparel Impact Initiative and many others), interviewed over 40 practitioners, and engaged with more than 100 leaders from brands, suppliers and organisations.

Funding models are fostering competition rather than collaboration

What we found (and it was no surprise, because we identified with it in our own work) was that the membership and funding models of the majority of initiatives foster competition rather than collaboration. Our findings included:

77% of the 57 initiatives reviewed are membership organisations competing with each other for members and budget.
Many membership organisations receive a significant proportion of their funding from member fees. For example the Better Cotton Initiative generated 72% of its revenue in 2022-23 from membership and Better Cotton Platform Access Fees, and for ACT on Living wages “the vast majority of activities of the foundation are funded by membership fees and in-kind contributions of the members” (1)

Forty four large global apparel brands dominate the membership of the initiatives with many brands being members of multiple initiatives including H&M (engaging with 72 initiatives) Fast Retailing (22 initiatives) and Bestseller (17 initiatives)

70% of the 57 initiatives have less than 300 members

Member engagement and reach is fragmented across the different initiatives with over 70% having less than 300 members.

Within these funding models, the work of industry-level collaboration - working towards shared goals, policy and systems change, and joining forces to minimise duplication, can be exceedingly difficult to justify in terms of added value for members, and to resource.

When it comes to policy and regulations - invariably at the top of the agenda for fashion professionals and businesses when asked what is most needed to move the dial on sustainability, the funding gap is even more acute. Of all the 57 organisations mapped, we found that 3 are actively working on the development of policy and legislation, with tiny annual budgets - representing together an estimated less than 1% of the total budget across all initiatives.

Suppliers interests are seriously under-represented

We also found that suppliers' interests are seriously under-represented within the majority of initiatives, and that impacts the sustainability progress that we as an industry can achieve:

Only 2% of initiatives have HQs in the Global South
This is despite 57% of the world’s apparel exports and 69% of the world’s textile exports (by value) being in the Global South (2)
Less than one in four initiatives have supply chain partners in either senior management or governance positions
“We have a bit of a toxic combination because these organizations are in the Global North; everything is headquartered there, and nothing is headquartered here... So, you have a narrative that is written by one group of people, a membership that is skewed to that group of people, tasks that are coming from primarily a brand background, and we’re steeped in that narrative... It’s very structurally colonial.” Anonymous quote from a supplier, A Call for a Fair Process report by Transformers Foundation, 2024

“responsibility for climate action in fashion is not shared, it is largely approached as a supplier problem” (Transformers Foundation, 2023)

“Towards a Collective Approach, Rethinking Fashion’s Doomed Climate Strategy” a seminal 2023 report from the Transformers Foundation, finds that “responsibility for climate action in fashion is not shared, it is largely approached as a supplier problem” and that “This approach is not only inequitable, it is impracticable and doomed to fail”

The Asia Garment Hub and supplier leadership

The FABRIC project launched by GIZ, the German Development Agency (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), in 2019 was unique in being the first major initiative to make supplier leadership its primary focus and bring together the organisations operating in the sector to join forces in this goal. The Asia Garment Hub (AGH), a central hub for collaboration towards better practices in Asian supply chains, including the Star Network (uniting 9 supplier bodies across Asia) and the Fashion Producer Group (uniting SME suppliers across Asia) was one of the most important outcomes of the FABRIC project.

In 2024 Common Objective (CO) joined forces with GIZ to transition the Asia Garment Hub to the CO platform and ensure its longevity. The Hub includes extensive resources and training including country hubs and supplier insights, alongside a growing community of professionals, suppliers, brands and organisations committed to ethical and sustainable fashion business. Browse the Hub or join the Asia Garment Hub Circle to be a part of it.

The AGH shows what is possible when true collaboration happens - and is supported by technology. However, this approach remains the exception to the rule.

An unmatched opportunity for collaboration

The opportunity to harness collaborative effort across the fashion industry is unmatched. What other sector has spawned so many dedicated, committed and passionate teams who have moved mountains in the fight for better practices across supply chains - starting with the Clean Clothes Campaign in 1989, and culminating in 28 new initiatives in just over the past decade.

If we can bring together all the combined effort, commitment, funding, resources, tools and solutions to offer a united front for brands and suppliers across all these networks, joining forces on our common objective (of a fashion industry that works better for all of us) rather than working in silos, this could be transformative.

Common Objective, alongside partners, is now working on doing exactly this, harnessing technology to overcome the competitive challenges that have made this difficult before. Join the Asia Garment Hub community to be kept in the loop.