During the latest edition of the 4Sustainability 2025 conference entitled “Tracing Fashion to a Responsible Future,” various topics of common interest to the textile and apparel sector were discussed in light of the compliance requirements of the current moment—both to address present and future challenges and to overcome the current market impasse.
Tthe event held at the Eurojersey headquarters North of Milan, organised by the Ympact consulting company, hosted various speakers. Among them, Rossella Ravagli, sustainability director at Armani Group, focused on the issue of risk, sharing the group’s experience and how it dealt with the problem that emerged a few months ago. In April 2024, the company was involved in a case of worker exploitation by one of its subcontractors for the production of bags and accessories.
On that occasion, the Court of Milan had ordered the judicial administration of Giorgio Armani Operations as part of an investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Despite this, after 11 months, in February 2024, the judges revoked the measure ahead of schedule, following “a virtuous path taken in line with the requirements imposed by the Court,” as explained at the time by the company.
Ravagli returned to the subject at the conference, echoing the statements of other speakers: “A process is not built overnight and must be systemic to ensure zero risk.”
“Just as there is no such thing as zero impact on the climate, there is no such thing as zero risk in business management processes. Rather, we need to think about a system that allows us to minimize this risk and, above all, allows us to understand what the risks are and modify them upstream,” said the manager.
According to the expert, it is important to start with a significant commitment both within the company and as a system, in line with a commitment she has been promoting for years.
“For a company, talking about responsibility means taking to heart the impact that is generated in all areas of the company, not only within the confines of its own factory but also throughout the entire supply chain, considering, for example, tier 1 and tier 2 levels,” she explained, referring to the way in which the group has been managing its relationships with its suppliers for years.
In fact, the Giorgio Armani company has long asked those who sign supply contracts with them to agree not to involve other players beyond the second level of supply, “because, as is well known, the longer the chain, the higher the probability of encountering some risk.”
“Although this was clear on paper, in reality, unfortunately—as it often happens, has happened, and still happens too often—for example, they work with unauthorized subcontractors,” she said, explaining why the company has developed controls that are sometimes unannounced.
“Unannounced audits have allowed us in many situations to find suppliers or subcontractors who did not actually have the right credentials. Therefore, the unannounced audit is something that is indispensable and must be included in the contractual clauses,” she added.
Over the years, the company, like many others in the sector, has chosen to follow a code that contains clauses to prevent child labor, forced labor, and discrimination, and guarantees freedom of association, adequate pay and working hours, and compliance with the rules on the use of immigrant workers.
“After defining these requirements, the second hurdle is to ensure that these requirements are not only accepted on paper but also properly implemented, both globally and in Italy, with a view to ESG risks,” she continued.
“In our mapping, Italy was green, almost bright green. However, Italy did give us a few surprises, alas. The law exists and protects people, but unfortunately, it is not always properly enforced,” she said, explaining how during inspections they found cases of workers, both Italian and foreign, who were not in compliance, as well as foreign workers without residence permits and cases of foreign workers working on fictitious part-time contracts, to cite a few examples.
“These are all non-compliances that we have found in recent years. And we found them because we worked hard to have tools that would allow us to bring them to light in a very fragmented reality such as that of precious Italian artisans,” she added, pointing out that checks on companies have always been carried out, even though many companies are very small and unstructured. Furthermore, these checks could not always be carried out on a frequent or strict schedule.
“As you all know, we had to deal with a critical situation, and this critical situation actually led us to be able to evaluate everything we have done and build a system that we cannot say is unbeatable — because it will not be unbeatable — but we can say that we have strengthened our governance by increasing controls in analyzing financial risks in the back office and the financial statements of suppliers and subcontractors in order to study the supply chain more and more and understand its difficulties and needs.”
In order to protect themselves as a brand and to significantly protect the supply chain, they also had to rationalize their supplier base in order to mitigate risks such as, for example, not being able to control a supplier in time.
“This improvement process takes time and definitely requires a tool, such as the one offered by Ympact,” explained the Armani manager, who, are minority shareholders of the YHub group, which has seen the entry into the corporate structure of Foro delle Arti (Holding di Brunello Cucinelli SpA), Matteo Marzotto, Federico Marchetti, Giorgio Armani SpA, and Fondazione del Tessile Italiano and has founded the Ympact initiative, an ecosystem that connects brands to their supply chains, allowing them to track key product and process data, monitor supply chain compliance, measure and reduce impacts, and optimize business operations.
“This tool allows us to quickly circulate information and compare all the departments involved. In our case, these are production, finance, legal, sustainability, and compliance. This rapid circulation of information has allowed us to further enhance what was already in place, but above all, it allows us to communicate and easily manage the entire supply chain. Over the course of this year, it has given us the opportunity to accelerate an improvement process that was already underway. This was possible, of course, thanks to the solid foundations and great cohesion that Mr. Armani instilled in all the teams in working together, even in the face of difficult moments such as those we had to face,” she emphasized.
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