Sustainability Issues in Asian Fashion Supply Chains: Retailers Versus Suppliers

Book chapter, 2019

A large part of the empirical research on sustainable supply chains takes place in fashion and apparel industry. Such a practice is not a surprise due to many scandals that society witnessed in the industry and the sense of urgency raised regarding especially the social dimension of sustainability in fashion supply chains. Although from an aggregate perspective, Asia is the fashion supplier market and Europe and USA are the fashion retail markets, with the impact of globalization one can no longer separate these two worlds. Both segments of fashion supply chains are prevalent in all markets, and they have different sustainability considerations. Despite the interest in scholarly literature on sustainability in fashion and textiles, a specific focus on the differentiated sustainability demands of the industry is lacking. This chapter makes an attempt to address this void by exploring sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices in fashion retailers and fashion suppliers. The chapter utilizes the triple bottom line (3BL)-based framework in order to analyze secondary data from Turkish fashion suppliers and retailers. The findings are discussed from a supply chain segmentation perspective.