Luxury and Cosmetics
End-to-end traceability for the beauty and luxury industries
Time for Transparency
We expect the products that make us feel good to be good: good for our bodies, our communities, the environment. And brands that demonstrate their products are good stand to gain market share from the next generation of conscious consumers. But it’s not enough to claim that products are safe and sustainable: brands and manufacturers need to prove it. That means going beyond business-as- usual and engaging with suppliers to ensure responsible sourcing standards are being met.
“Fifty-one percent of consumers would switch to a new personal-care product if they were better able to understand what was in it.”
— LABEL INSIGHT INGREDIENT CONFUSION STUDY
What the luxury and cosmetics industry needs to focus on
Ingredient Transparency: Consumers are more likely to buy beauty products when they know and understand the ingredients contained within. That requires supply chain transparency.
Safety: Consumers expect safe, non-toxic, hypoallergenic beauty products, all without dependence on animal testing. Traceability is the only way to ensure that the ingredient chain of custody is unbroken and monitored.
Environmental Issues: Everything we buy, from soap and shampoo to the cardboard box it’s sold in, poses a risk to protected forests, sensitive waterways, and the air we breathe. What’s more, any wasteful process hurts the bottom line. Ensuring responsible sourcing means supply chain mapping and continuously monitoring supplier performance.
Labor Issues: Although less often publicized than other priorities, agricultural and manufacturing supply chains are rife with labor issues from low wages to unsafe workplaces and child labor. Codes of conduct only have teeth when all suppliers and sub-suppliers are monitored for compliance, with low performers periodically audited.
Authenticity: Counterfeiting is rife in the beauty products industry, and counterfeit products pose a risk to consumer perceptions across all of the previous priorities (not to mention the bottom line). Only traceability can prevent counterfeiting and smuggling.
Applications and Commodities
Select a commodity to learn more about how Sourcemap can help
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Beauty and Cosmetics
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Mica
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Conflict Minerals
FAQs
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People have been mapping supply chains as long as they’ve been making maps. But traditional maps only provide a summary view - they don't show how supply chains change in real time. Modern supply chain mapping is the process of engaging across companies and suppliers to document the exact source of every material, every process and every shipment involved in bringing goods to market. Accurate supply chain mapping only became possible with the rise of online maps and the social web. The first online supply chain mapping platform was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 (the underlying open source technology is the basis for Sourcemap). Read More
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The concept of supply chain transparency was virtually unknown 15 years ago, yet today it commands the attention of mid- and senior-level managers across a broad spectrum of companies and industries.
The reasons for this increased interest are clear: Companies are under pressure from governments, consumers, NGOs, and other stakeholders to divulge more information about their supply chains, and the reputational cost of failing to meet these demands can be high. For example, food companies are facing more demand for supply-chain-related information about ingredients, food fraud, animal welfare, and child labor. Less clear, however, is how to define transparency in a supply chain context and the extent to which companies should pursue it: an MIT study that mapped definitions of supply chain transparency related to labor practices in the apparel industry found vastly different definitions across organizations.
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Companies are under increased pressure from governments and regulators to ensure that their products are compliant with human rights and environmental standards. The only way for companies to ensure their supply chains are "clean" is by mapping their supply chains down the raw materials using auditable, verifiable data.