EziBuy’s letter

Read the letter we sent EziBuy here.

Hello Sarah,

Thanks for your letter regarding how our garments are produced.

There are indeed many challenges in producing overseas and EziBuy is fortunate in that the majority of our product is produced in China where we have over 30 years sourcing experience. Key to EziBuy’s success are the principles of honesty,integrity, trust and pride that not only extends to our relationships with customers, but to employees as well as suppliers.

We continually challenge our approach to our sourcing and supply chain strategy to ensure our products are made in a safe and fair working environment and that we are acting responsibly towards the people who make our products. This includes having an Ethical Sourcing Programme in place.

Providing quality clothing that matches customer price expectations is tough for any retailer. For EziBuy, this drove us to source further afield and shift some production further north and inland China. To improve the supply chain with this move, we took a direct approach to our sourcing to enable greater transparency, improved communication and tighter control over the factories that make our product.

Ethical trade is very important to EziBuy and over the past year we have heavily invested in this area. We have employed a Quality Assurance/Sourcing Manager with extensive experience working in China, who has taken on the responsibility of driving our Ethical Sourcing Programme. We’re working with a global consultancy company who specialize in ethical sourcing issues and recently, held a supplier seminar in Shanghai to restate our high expectations and to capacity build around the key issues of wage compliance, child labour prevention and how to build a strong health and safety system.

Our new independent 3rd party audit programme was also recently introduced. This is based on an internationally accepted standard and most importantly includes confidential interviews with workers, giving them an opportunity to speak. The first step in improving conditions and jobs for workers is to understand what their key issues are. We pride ourselves on taking great accountability in this area – investing in and facilitating consultancy work where needed at both management and grass root level. This ensures root causes are addressed and corrective action is implemented. Critical issues are addressed immediately, but as you’ll appreciate, some issues cannot be resolved overnight. However, EziBuy strives for continuous improvement and we are constantly working with our suppliers to resolve even minor issues. We are also in the process of relocating a member of our team to China to manage this process and to support any project work that we will be investing in.

For sure it is a constant challenge to both track our supply base and understand the rapidly changing issues within it – but with our efforts over the past few years, we believe we are now in a good position. We’re working closer to the source and have the tools to identify the issues as well as specialists on board to drive positive change. There’s still a lot to learn, but EziBuy are more committed than ever to developing an Ethical Sourcing Programme that both our colleagues and customers can be proud of.

Yours sincerely,
Myles Taylor
Merchandising director, EziBuy Limited