by Ashleigh Maier
Madewell is a retail clothing company based in the United States. They have 145 store locations throughout the country, and an extensive website filled with their products. Madewell sells awide array of clothing, shoes, and accessories, but their claim to fame is their premium denim.They’re website is very clear in emphasizing their responsible sourcing policies, which includes the exclusion of sandblasting when producing denim in order to protect the safety of employees. Additionally, they have a goal of increasing their Fair Trade Certified denim to 90percent by 2025.
Responsible Brand Checklist:
Company acts in light of environmental and social needs of people – gives back to the community
Madewell emphasizes three major ways that they give back to the community: femaleempowerment, carbon offsets, and inclusivity. To promote female empowerment, they partner with nonprofit Girls Inc. and run Girls Who Create workshops. To work towards lowering carbon offsets, they matched Giving Tuesday donations made to the National Forest Foundation. And to promote inclusivity, they donate 50 percent of the purchase price of their Love to All collection to the Human Rights Campaign.
Company is transparent in all that they do, good and bad
Madewell’s website is incredibly detailed when it comes to their social responsibility practices.Their Do Well tab covers everything from their corporate-nonprofit partnerships, to their environmental and supply-chain awareness in sourcing apparel materials. They are transparent that they could always be doing better, and they even show that their 2025 Fair Trade Certified90 percent goal is only currently at 26 percent. Madewell is very aware of their goals but also very aware that goals take time to reach.
Internal representation in advertisements and campaigns match and display support for diversity and inclusion
In recent months, Madewell added a Black Lives Matter statement complete with goals forimproving their diversity & inclusion efforts. They are clear in stating that they have work to do, but their statement feels authentic to their brand. Madewell also has a section regardingd iversity & inclusion in their Do Well report. In this report, they lay out the various ways that they give back to the community to improve inclusion efforts, as well as details about their Open To All campaign.
While these three checklist items are just a few that stand out, Madewell truly fits the criteriaf or many other checklist items as well. They are an authentic brand with great goals an dtransparency that transcend through their employee base and retail stock.