Global Fashion Group (GFG) is the leading online fashion and lifestyle destination in LATAM, SEA and ANZ with a deep commitment to drive supply of and demand for lower impact fashion.
GFG is behind leading e-commerce brands ZALORA, Dafiti, THE ICONIC, and has offices in Luxembourg, London, Singapore, Berlin, Vietnam, and Kuala Lumpur.
The company connects thousands of global and local fashion and lifestyle brands with nearly 800 million consumers across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and ANZ. It is also listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
GFG has a strong grasp of the pressing need for sustainability within the fashion industry and has taken major steps to address the issue. At Unravel Carbon, we had the honor of collaborating with them on these efforts.
In this interview with the GFG team, their insights shed light on the remarkable progress made by the company and offer a glimpse into their commitment to driving positive change.
What led to the development of GFG’s People & Planet Positive Strategy?
The undeniable reality of climate change compels us to be aware of our impacts towards people and the planet and to evolve our business towards becoming a climate sensitive and positive entity.
As a fashion company, we take our responsibility to build a better and more sustainable future very seriously. We acknowledge our responsibility to our employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders who believe in our capacity to play a pivotal role in transforming the fashion industry in our markets and consistently delivering long-term shared values.
Since 2020, we have embraced this responsibility, redoubling our sustainability efforts and launching our People & Planet Positive strategy. GFG’s sustainability initiatives revolve around three key pillars: Climate Action, Circularity & Conscious Consumption, and Fair & Ethical Sourcing. These priorities underscore our unwavering commitment to sustainable practices and responsible business conduct.
As of 2022, we are able to reduce our carbon footprint in absolute terms by 29% from our 2019 base year. We continue to strive for further reductions in the future, demonstrating our ongoing dedication to environmental stewardship and sustainability.
Why did you choose Unravel Carbon to measure your emissions?
Unravel Carbon offered us the ability to streamline our carbon emissions calculations by utilizing both structured and unstructured data from stakeholders across our different regions: Latin America (Dafiti), Southeast Asia (ZALORA) and Australia & New Zealand (THE ICONIC). By doing so, it significantly reduces manual effort in data processing.
What sets Unravel Carbon apart are its additional features and services. It provides us with target modeling, and automated identification of emission reduction solutions, complete with cost and return on investment (ROI) analysis. These added capabilities empower us to set targets, compare our performance against peers, and identify effective emission reduction strategies with financial insights.
How has your team’s processes changed since you started using Unravel Carbon?
Through this collaboration, we have gained the ability to identify and track our data sources, connecting them directly to the respective data owners. This approach allows us to pinpoint key gaps in data quality specific to each one of GFG’s regions. As a result, we can focus on improving our data quality while simultaneously devising strategies to reduce our carbon footprint.
By closely working with our internal partners, we can ensure that the data we rely on for carbon emissions calculations is accurate, reliable, and comprehensive. This collaboration not only enables us to improve the precision of our carbon footprint measurement but also helps us identify areas where we can take targeted actions to reduce our environmental impact even further.
What results have you achieved since you implemented Unravel Carbon?
This new platform has proven to be an invaluable addition to our toolkit, empowering us to navigate the path towards greater sustainability with improved efficiency and effectiveness.
One noteworthy example is the data validation and cleansing features. They have reduced our data preparation time by 60%. Specifically, the option to "bulk map" data to the correct "picklist" options has proven invaluable in cases where data is unstructured.
With graphics and detailed calculation methods, these reports provide us with a clear and concise overview of our sustainability progress.
What are GFG’s long-term sustainability ambitions?
We have aligned our sustainability goals with the Science Based Targets initiative, which aims to achieve significant reductions in emissions and promote conscious consumption. By 2030, we aim to reduce Scope 1 & 2 absolute emissions by 50% and Scope 3 intensity emissions by 90% per million of Net Merchandise Value (NMV).
Our strategy includes sourcing 100% renewable electricity, using preferred sustainable materials in 91% of own-brand products, and ensuring 55% of NMV comes from sustainable materials or eco-production methods. We also plan to increase circular products to represent 40% of NMV, provide closed-loop take-back solutions for 48% of sold products, use sustainable materials for packaging, and divert at least 96% of waste from landfills.
In terms of fair and ethical sourcing, we aim to have all brands meeting human rights standards, conduct living wage assessments for own-brand factories, and achieve traceability for 50% of own-brand products by 2030.
These ambitious targets demonstrate our commitment to creating a more sustainable and responsible fashion sector.
Emphasizing the importance of sustainability in our vision to be the #1 online destination for fashion & lifestyle in our markets, GFG is committed to provide a platform that allows customers to express themselves while aligning with our values and positively impacting the planet and society.
