Customer Story
customer story

Launching the ASICS Traceability Transformation

TrusTrace interviews Matthew Xu, CSR and Sustainability Lead at ASICS for a case study in The Traceability Roadmap playbook. Headquartered in Japan, ASICS is a publicly traded performance sportswear company focused on footwear and apparel.

ASICS

Overview

Use Case

Product Traceability & Supply Chain Transparency

Module/Solution

Traceability, Supply Chain Mapping

Milestone

Traceability scaled beyond Tier 1
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BACKGROUND

When people think about traceability, many brands are still struggling to establish a comprehensive process to address it. In my view, this represents a transformative endeavour. Drawing on my years of experience in corporate transformations, I believe it is crucial to approach this like any other transformation project.

The ASICS traceability initiative is a corporate transformation from a linear to a circular business model. Traceability plays a vital role in achieving transparency — not only to share our story but also to exchange best practices and foster collaboration in addressing challenges.

SOLUTION

To effectively lead such a transformation, discipline is paramount. With the assistance of TrusTrace, we developed a robust project charter — a guiding document that ensures our team understands the project’s essential aspects, success indicators, and expectations, thus keeping everyone focused. Putting everything in black and white on paper facilitates understanding throughout the organization.

When we made the decision to collaborate with TrusTrace, we conducted brand meetings to introduce their platform to the ASICS team. We emphasized the unique value TrusTrace offered compared to other solution providers we had considered. TrusTrace made it easy for me by demoing the platform and assisting in articulating our plan.

The project charter encompasses opportunities, goals and objectives related to responsible sourcing and product integrity. It also outlines specific deliverables. In the short term, these deliverables will help us address immediate concerns and risks while achieving operational excellence and efficiency. Whenever the project swings off track, the charter serves as a compass to realign everyone.

We had three main deliverables: developing and implementing the traceability system, ensuring its adoption by our employees and suppliers, and integrating it with our existing supply chain management systems.

This integration aims to not only drive efficiency but to enhance business resilience.

IMPACT

From a strategic standpoint, we closely monitored upcoming laws that would affect us. For instance, the Forced Labor laws highlighted cotton as the primary material subject to mandatory traceability. Accordingly, we determined the highest-volume products and identified the appropriate traceability tiers.

By creating a project charter, you can help your colleagues comprehend the various project phases and plans to pave the path for implementation. Articulating this to the management team instills confidence.

The initial step involves running diagnostics to understand the current challenges and the urgency for change. Then, we must guide people in envisioning the future — how the transformation will benefit the company — not just in terms of traceability and sustainability but also for the business itself to drive resilience.

It’s important to connect the project vision to the broader company’s mission, as it resonates with those focused on business objectives.

For ASICS, our commitment to a better world revolves around enabling everyone to live healthy lives through mental and physical activity. This mission is the driving force behind our Mission 2030 initiative, which seeks to establish a holistic framework of responsible sourcing and product integrity.

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TURN SUPPLY CHAIN DATA INTO ACTION

Gain full visibility into your upstream supply chain and connect verified product data to drive compliance, resilience, and circularity with TrusTrace.

Module
Supply Chain Mapping
Collect and classify data coming directly from suppliers onto the platform. Gain visibility over complex supplier networks and screen for hidden risks.
Module
Traceability
Gain complete visibility into your supply chain, easily tracing up or downstream to automate data collection, validate sustainability claims, and simplify compliance.

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Take control of your supply chain risk, compliance, and impact with the world's leading traceability platform for fashion, footwear and textile supply chains. Start by speaking with the TrusTrace team today. 
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