“Time to Deliver. A report on transparency among Swedish online fashion brands”, June 2021

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the trend towards a shopping culture in Sweden that is increasingly taking place online … Many of the online companies involved in the exploding sector are racing to the top and have become among the fastest growing businesses in Sweden.

Fair Action hopes this race for sales will include the same high ambitions towards, and investments in, sustainable business practices. Transparency in the supply chain plays a key role in transforming the fashion business into an industry where factory workers can make a decent living off their wages, raise their collective voices through free, independent unions, and where the climate and environmental footprint of the fashion industry on our planet is minimized.

We found that three of the companies, NA-KD, Bubbleroom, and Ellos Group are publicly disclosing information about their private label suppliers, including names and addresses of the factories. The other three companies, Ridestore, Junkyard, and Stronger, have committed to publish their supplier lists during 2021.

… [N]one of the brands are willing to share any information on wages for workers sewing the clothes. In addition, none of the companies have a strategy for how to increase factory wages, even though low wages have been a well-known problem for decades in the industry.

The lack of wage data transparency makes it impossible to assess whether wages are sufficiently high to cover costs for basic living needs such as food, education, housing, health care and savings for unforeseen events.