See Through the Luxury Jewelry Supply Chain — A New Methodology for Sustainable Practice
In the past years, there has been a growing awareness concerning issues of sustainability and transparency in the fashion industry. After being in the jewelry designing business for more than a decade, I started questioning where the materials that I use are coming from, and what are the impacts that daily production processes that I was raised on create.
Unfortunately, profound answers were not found, my suppliers didn’t answer questions regarding matters of source materials and environmental impacts — they either did not care or perhaps did not want to share this information. This is when I realized that the jewelry industry was missing the levels of transparency and sustainability that the fashion industry was starting to embrace, so I decided to write my thesis and final project as part of my M.A in Sustainability in fashion on the luxury jewelry supply chain; and the implementation of sustainable, transparent and circular strategies within its operation.
During my studies, I attended the event “Creating an Era of Transparency in Fashion”, organized by the Zalando Corporate Social Responsibility team. I came across Wikirate and we set a project to collaboratively researched the topic of transparency in the luxury jewelry supply chain.[1] The Wikirate platform allowed me to review large luxury companies and to better understand their operations, limitations, resources and management systems, to make sure the methodology I develop would fit these businesses reality and their daily operation. This was the missing link in my research methods.
In the collaborative research, we reviewed 15 major luxury jewelry companies, understand what sustainable issues they choose to deal with and which ones remain unresolved. We discovered the information regarding what they disclose by themselves and what information is shared by other stakeholders and communicated to consumers. The aim of the research was to investigate issues concerning environmental problems in the production chain of luxury jewelry by using only publically available data. I was looking to understand the transparency aspect of the industry and gain knowledge regarding the actual production processes and their impacts on their products. Together with Wikiarate, a research event was organized where 12 volunteers, not related to the field, reviewed the matrix we developed. We asked the participants to base their answers on publically available resources: a report by Human Rights Watch — The Hidden Cost of Jewelry from early 2018, the CSR/sustainable section in the company website and reports posted by the companies themselves.
As I discovered through my research, the topic of sustainable jewelry is not well researched at an academic level and it was difficult to find data on the topic. Refining my research methodologies was a key element, Wikirate allowed me to do that. By using their platform, I could gather a vast amount of information from multiple companies and analyze it relatively easily. Their support with the research event we organized contributed to the confirmation of my assumptions regarding the sustainable activities of these brands, while further understand the industry and get factual information about the operations of these companies in relation to sustainability. This collaborative research, together with interviews, questionnaires with industry experts from all over the world, and content analysis led me to understand what is missing in terms of sustainable support systems for designers and brands.
As part of my research and thesis I develop 3 sustainable schemes to explain what kind of sustainable strategies would fit this industry and products. Side by side to the development of these model a new methodology for analyzing and mapping the supply chain for sustainable luxury jewelry production was created. The system I developed is called See Through methodology and it takes the user step by step in the process of product developement highlighting sustainable sourcing but also alternative processes and supportive materials for these processes. Another important aspect is some guidence for users about issues to be aware of while creating jewelry and some questions to find out with your suppliers or sub contractors. This is just the starting point for See Through methodology that hopefully could shift the fine jewelry industry to positive and regenerative places in the close future.
