Marketplace

Our relationships with our customers and suppliers are at the heart of our business and we believe we can and should work together to build a sustainable business. This year we undertook the development of a sustainable procurement programme and identified the core impacts which are important to us and which we believe we can influence through our supply chain. They are:

• Ethical trading – labour practices and working conditions in our own brand supply chain;
• Waste – generation and disposal of waste;
• Carbon emissions – created by the delivery of goods to our distribution centres and our shipments to customers; and
• Paper – used in the production of our product catalogues and marketing activity.

Highlights of our marketplace programme in 2007 include:

• Engaging with a social enterprise with considerable experience and expertise in this area, Action Sustainability, and securing funding from UK government Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affiars (DEFRA) to assist in the development of a sustainable procurement programme;
• Development and publication of our supply chain CSR policy;
• Defining workplace standards for the factories of those suppliers with whom we contract to produce own brand products;
• Engaging with eight of our most important own brand suppliers in order to assess them against our labour practices and working conditions standards; and
• Development and roll-out of training for our commercial teams on the environmental and social issues affecting our supply chains.