2024 Carter’s, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Responsible Sourcing
Responsible Sourcing
We are committed to ensuring that all workers are treated fairly, and we expect the same from our suppliers. We seek to create a better world for current and future generations by ensuring the workers making our clothes and their families are treated with the dignity they deserve.We do this by carefully selecting our Tier 1 (i.e., direct) suppliers, who manufacture our products, and reinforcing our expectations through annual training, monitoring, and policies informed by the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In 2024, Carter’s enhanced our vendor transparency by publishing our full list of Tier 1 suppliers.
Traceability
Traceability
Through our enhanced traceability capabilities, we are better able to work with our supply chain partners to ensure that raw materials and other components of our products are not harvested or produced with forced labor. We continue to monitor applicable laws and regulations subject to our value chain.
In 2023, we continued our traceability efforts to the mill level. Our comprehensive traceability program focuses on:
We also introduced isotopic testing, a new technology to test our cotton to the level of country of origin. This technology identifies country of origin by testing the chemical fingerprint of a material sample against an existing database of country-level markers. Understanding the country where our materials come from enables us to make better decisions as we consider labor risks, climate-related risks, and supply chain resiliency. We have randomly tested four of our top ten fabrics to validate country of origin, without incident. Remaining fabrics will be tested in the near future.
- Capability Screening: Assessing ability of suppliers to provide documentation showing material origin
- Factory Training: Providing training and education to suppliers and building competencies as needed
- Mock Audits: Verifying and validating material tracing capability
Traceability Program Components
