Rohan has been a member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) since 2005.
This is an alliance of companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade union organisations working together to improve the conditions for overseas workers producing for the UK market. We chose to join the ETI as it seems to us the most effective and responsible way of getting things done.
We have adopted the ETI Base Code as our code of conduct. The Base Code clearly sets out standards for the treatment of factory workers in all areas such as wages, working hours, conditions, forced and child labour.
All our garment suppliers have formally agreed with us to abide by this code.>
Our aim is to build proper partnerships with our factories so that we can maintain high quality standards and together work on all ethical issues.
Rohan works with a relatively small number of partner factories and our product teams regularly visit them throughout the year. However, we feel that a further level of inspection and audit will help things improve further and quicker.
When it comes to auditing many businesses ask factories to audit themselves - and then to pay for it.
Clearly there are some pitfalls to this approach so we have appointed some independent and highly qualified auditors.
They do their work on our behalf and at our cost.
However well-intentioned any business might be you can always find areas for improvement if you look hard enough. We are pleased to have made a number of pay and safety improvements already since we started the audit process.
We know this is just a start and that it will be a long journey. We regard everything we are doing as just a stage on this journey, but one that we are fully committed to take together.
