Trade Facilitation Programme

The first pillar and centerpiece of Sourcery’s Direct-to-Grower™ Solution, the Trade Facilitation Programme employs Sourcery’s transformative “pull-based” sourcing solution and trade methodology that adopts lean production principles and enables more transparent, fair, efficient, and fully traceable transactions from grower to consumer.

The Trade Facilitation Programme is essential to our Partners—ensuring that each enquiry, offer commitment (forward contract) and final transaction on fibre, yarn, and fabric contributes to the transformation of trade for good.

As a sourcing solution and trade platform, going “Direct-to-Grower” is simple, flexible, and scalable.

Planning

Planning includes defining your organisation’s commercial, transparency and impact objectives, selecting vendors and products, measuring consumption and selecting fibre.

Engagement

Engagement starts with collaboration, communication, transparency and trust. Mapping your vendors and their value chains partners and working together to transform trade for good.

Commitment

Commitment is where ‘ambition is turns into action’ through better contracting and trade that is are more transparent, fair, efficient and fully traceable from grower to consumer.

Unique pull-based system of trade leverages ‘forward transaction momentum’

Through Sourcery’s commercially neutral and collaborative engagement and trade facilitation process, we enable our Partners to build transparent, fair and efficient supply chains that leverages ‘forward transaction momentum’ to accelerate commercial and environmental excellence that aims to benefit everyone from grower to consumer.

Partners who have adopted the Direct-to-Grower™ Solution can simply remit and receive purchase orders, enquires, offers and participate in forward contracts (commitments) on fibre, yarn and fabric with the support of the Sourcery dedicated Engagement Team who deliver full-service turn-key sourcing and trade support from grower to consumer.

Shifting the trade

paradigm

With every order place on fibre, yarn, fabric and finished goods, Sourcery aims to shift the trade paradigm that transforms how commercial actors engage, communicate, and trade with each other ensuring each transaction is built on transparency, fairness, trust and efficiency leading to impact at scale.

Transparency

Transparency is more than understanding what is happening in your value chain, it’s understanding why things happen in your value chain. Sourcery’s role as a commercially neutral trade intermediary and facilitator gives our team of Grower, Manufacturer and Brand Engagement professionals unparalleled access and visibility into our Partner’s businesses—including their commercial, operational, financial health while understanding each Partner’s trade practices and behaviors so we can support their transformation.

Fairness

Ensuring fairness across all fibre, yarn and fabric transactions is critical to driving commercial and environmental excellence at scale. Our approach to fairness is built around what we define at Sourcery as ‘Cost Clarity.’ Cost Clarity is ensuring that all Partners understand and acknowledge the true cost (and risks and benefits) that are required deliver commercial, social and environmental excellence in trade.

When Sourcery Partners are making investments that improve quality, integrity, transparency, traceability, and impact we ensure the risk and reward of making these investments² are shared equitably across the value chain from grower to consumer.

²As a member-owned sourcing solution, all costs and benefits of membership, transactions and primary data collection and verification (see Impact and Assurance Programme) are shared equitably between all Partners who benefit from more transparent, fair and efficient trade through Sourcery.

Efficiency

From grower to consumer, there exists many ‘trade inefficiencies’ which occur across traditional ‘push-based’ commodity approaches to trade. These trade inefficiencies and supply networks can increase costs, risk, volatility, and opacity resulting in over-production, and unnecessary waste.

Sourcery has identified as many as 32 ‘trade inefficiencies’ that it can identify, intervene, mitigate and resolve through its Trade Facilitation Programme ‘lean production’ methodology.²

Our team of Engagement and Commercial Trade professionals work to ensure that all transactions on fibre, yarn and fabric are more transparent, fair and efficient so that Partners can invest more in the transformation of trade for good.

²Sourcery has adopted and applied principles of Sigma 6 and the Toyota Production System (TPS) through its Trade Facilitation Programme.

Trust

Trust is a prerequisite for transparency and traceability. Sourcery Partner’s businesses are built around establishing mutually beneficial and resilient relationships with their vendors and clients. These relationships serve as the backbone for establishing transparent, fair and efficient trade and require deep collaboration, communication, understanding and commitment—which means assuming both the risk and reward that exist in the transformation of trade for good.

Impact

Commercial, social, and environmental excellence is a byproduct of more transparent, fair, and efficient trade.

Through the Trade Facilitation Programme, Sourcery works to ensure that each Partners can create more value for their businesses, therefore being able to drive more value to other partner businesses and together drive more commercial, social and environmental impact across the sector. This is especially true of growers where quality, integrity and impact begin—on the farm.

Through better trade and our Impact and Assurance Programme, Sourcery’s mission is to ensure that its Partners are recognised and rewarded for their contributions—this is what it means to transform trade for good.

Transforming

Trade for good

  • Planning includes defining your organisation’s commercial, transparency and impact objectives, selecting vendors and products, measuring consumption and selecting fibre.

  • Engagement starts with collaboration, communication, transparency and trust. Mapping your vendors and their value chains partners and working together to transform trade for good.

  • Commitment is where ‘ambition is turns into action’ through better contracting and trade that is are more transparent, fair, efficient and traceable from grower to retailer.

Why go Direct-to-Grower™?

Explore the three Direct-to-Grower™ Solution Pillars that support you in securing fibre, yarn and fabric with full transparency, traceability and verified impact from grower to brand.