Do you have any idea about the origins of the materials used in a set of sheets you purchase from a big-box store, or the specifics of the supply chain for that particular brand? Most likely not; the business might not either.
These enormous companies have been producing these commodities for many generations. According to Scott Tannen, founder and CEO of Boll & Branch, "their supply chain was passed down to them by somebody else, and passed down to that person from someone before" at the 2024 Fast Company Innovation Festival. Therefore, asking questions isn't really made possible by the system itself.
He also mentioned that if an employee does try to ask questions, they may encounter some pushback, such as a CFO bringing up the possibility that supply chain adjustments could have an impact on margins. However, Tannen didn't inherit a supply chain when he started his bedding business in 2014. Having to start over, he took advantage of the chance to make choices that would guarantee his supply chain and products are more environmentally and socially responsible.
"And understanding the human impact—both from a financial and a human health standpoint—of cotton in the developing world," he said, summarizing it as "really, really bad," is how Boll & Branch started with the raw material, cotton. Unmanageable debt, made worse by the market's high cost of genetically modified seeds, has led to the suicide of cotton farmers in India. Additionally, pesticides and fertilizers used in conventional cotton farming have been connected to health and environmental problems.
The organic cotton performs better on those metrics. Tannen stated, "That became a first choice." "And after that, another choice leads to yet another and still another choice." Building an ethical supply chain from the ground up was made possible by his decision to follow the path of every "better" choice. He wouldn't have been able to truly have the desired positive impact by making the responsible changes to an already-existing supply chain that already had all those first decisions built in.
Boll & Branch, unlike many other large companies, did not rely on middlemen; instead, it took control of the entire supply chain, transporting the cotton to spinners and dyers. Boll & Branch allows clients to take a self-guided tour of that journey via its website. They can find out where the cotton was sourced, spun, and woven by entering the lot number of their product. "It holds that accountability system in place and helps us from a quality assurance perspective when we have product issues," Tannen stated. "Unless all of these fields are filled in, you are unable to actually create a SKU within our system."