In its 75th year, Puma is professing many more decades to come — with help along the way.
Collaboration is key for the athletic giant’s sourcing prowess, according to Puma’s chief sourcing officer Anne-Laure Descours. She took on the position in February 2019, seven years after first joining Puma to head apparel and accessories sourcing.
Descours and her team got down to work straightaway, building Puma’s Forever.Better sustainability strategy, which is based on the company’s 10for25 targets introduced in 2019. These targets are informed by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and span human rights, climate action, circularity, products, water and air, biodiversity, plastics and the ocean, chemicals, health and safety, and fair income.
The program was the result of a meticulous materiality analysis and stakeholder dialogue. “Through this strategy we aim to make Puma better across the entire value chain,” Descours said in an interview with WWD. “We know there is still a lot of work to be done, but we are encouraged by the progress we are making.”
More Than Meets the Eye
While logos, innovations or star-studded athlete collaborations may seem to rule the sports world for the moment, there are deep supply chain efforts to get to that final goal — or product.
Puma’s latest pilot version of its iconic sneaker “the Suede” is one such feat. The Re:Suede is made with materials such as Zeology-tanned suede (free of chrome and heavy metals), biodegradable thermoplastic polymers and hemp fibers. This combination was tested for better comfort for the wearer.
“We are currently in the process of finalizing the test results whether the shoe has biodegraded at an industrial composting company in the Netherlands successfully and will share these soon,” Descours hinted. “We also trialed garment-to-garment recycling as part of the Re:Fibre project, which saw big activations with football clubs such as Manchester City and Olympique de Marseille.”
Always in motion, the brand hosted its “Conference of the People” global event in London last September — with a special focus on Gen Z — to discuss solutions for a more sustainable fashion industry.
In her role, Descours regularly listens to myriad stakeholders. “A result stemming from our COP was our ‘Puma Voices of a Re:Generation’ initiative, a project that prioritizes sustainability for the next generation,” she shared. “Four young people, called Voices of a Re:Generation, will work with us to translate sustainability in a way that makes sense to and engages with the next generation. I am inspired by these young change makers who are passionate about creating a better future, challenging the status quo, and working with us to drive change. To make our 2022 Sustainability Report more accessible to a wider and younger audience, we also created the podcast series Puma Re:Gen Reports. The podcasts feature next-generation thinkers who debate key topics in our sustainability report without corporate jargon.”
The Finer Details
Corporate jargon aside, climate milestones are progressing. Compared to its 2017 baseline, Puma reduced its emissions from its own offices, stores and warehouses by 86 percent (aiming for 90 percent by 2030), mainly due to the purchase of renewable electricity and renewable energy attribute certificates. The brand committed to net-zero by 2050 — at the latest — as part of its engagement with the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action. (A March status report from the charter said less than 2 percent of companies currently have a verified net-zero target, with nearly 30 percent having “committed” to set them).
“Our emissions from the supply chain are more important than our own emissions and more difficult to reduce,” Descours said. “Consequently, we aim for a 33 percent absolute reduction until 2030 compared to 2017. In 2022 we stood at 9 percent absolute reduction, despite doubling our sales in the same period. The reduction is due to the increased usage of lower carbon materials such as recycled polyester (as compared to virgin polyester) and the introduction of renewable energy in our supply chain. In 2022 we stood at 11 percent renewable energy for our core Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. We aim to more than double this figure by 2025 and reach 25 percent.”
Still, the company is tasked with growing its bottom line without forfeiting its sustainability targets. “Our absolute carbon emission reduction over the last five years, despite the significant growth, shows that the decoupling of growth and emissions is possible,” she explained. “But this will need to be a concerted effort in partnership with our suppliers and industry peers.”
Supplier Best
Suppliers are getting their cut, too. On the social side, Puma’s average wage payment was reportedly 13.4 percent above minimum wages for its core supplier tier 1 factories in 2022.
“We offer our manufacturers access to our vendor financing program, a financial support package,” said Descours. “This is a system we have had in place since 2016. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), and banking groups BNP Paribas, HSBC and Standard Chartered offer attractive financing terms to our suppliers. Suppliers with a good or very good sustainability rating are rewarded with a lower interest rate. With the four banking partners in place, we are well positioned to support our manufacturers through the vendor financing program.” Levi’s is one other brand with a sustainability-linked vendor finance program.
Along with her suppliers, what keeps Descours motivated among the demands of supply chain overhaul is, oddly enough, her critics.
“I believe in industry; I believe in manufacturing. There is a fantastic journey ahead of us, but we need to work harder, believe in ourselves and collaborate more to get further, faster. Having three kids in their 20s is a very good motivation for me to continue doing all I can to have a positive impact. In our industry we receive a lot of criticism from others about what we do and how we do it. A recent favorite quotation of mine by Rick Gervais is, ‘It’s better to create something that others criticize than to create nothing and criticize others.’ We are going to keep pushing to do better and sharing the journey, to move forward collectively as an industry.”
