供应商如何才能适应零售商越来越高的期望？

Part One这个由两部分组成的系列看着朝着可持续性零售商的态度，以及他们正在采取的各种方法。竞彩足球app怎么下载

As retailers lay out their sustainability expectations, supplier reactions vary. We’ve seen the full range of emotions famously described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’five stages of grief- 从拒绝和愤怒经过讨价还价，抑郁终于接受了必然的。根据我们的经验，灵活和适应性强的企业通过这些阶段完全转移相对较快，而最好的超越消极的心态去拥抱上攻可持续性。竞彩足球app怎么下载

This pattern does not surprise John Fojut, the Vice President of企业可持续发展竞彩足球app怎么下载at Kohl's Corporation. Fojut sees a clear segmentation among suppliers and their approach to sustainability. "Our vendors fall into three buckets. They either consider [sustainability] part of their core values, they see it as something that gives them competitive advantage, or they just see it as something they have to comply with.”

积极的态度 - 植根于认识到，改善环境和社会表现可以帮助任何企业更聪明，更强大，更有利可图的 - 是为未来的发展奠定良好的基础。为什么？由于长期生存能力依赖于不断改进和创新，其中包括增强可持续性。竞彩足球app怎么下载

Fojut指出，谁采取积极的厂商，积极的心态是很好的回报。"Instead of having to react and adapt to someone else's priorities -- like when some companies got surprised by the rising tide of consumer concern about social responsibility -- [we’re all discovering it’s better to] get ahead of the curve and come together to agree on what's important and what progress we want to drive."

Overall, he reports, Kohl’s suppliers are making progress. “We've been talking about this for five years and we see some good movement. Suppliers are shifting from thinking it's all about compliance to seeing that it can add value to their businesses." Perhaps most significantly, suppliers are also starting to cascade sustainability upstream into the rest of the supply chain. “We have a sizeable group now asking their own suppliers sustainability questions. This is where we wanted it to go."

Target Corporation is also holding itself and its suppliers accountable, according to Scott Lercel, Director ofSocial Responsibility & Sustainability。公司采用“一个非常强大的供应商记分卡提供了与供应商的谈话要点我们采购的领导，因为他们每年举行一次会议，审查他们的表现，他们的优势说话，讨论如何提升机会，” Lercel说。“我们的供应商采取记分卡非常重视。”

Target currently measures vendors against their peers in the industry on metrics like quality, on-time shipping, and social compliance. Beginning next year the retailer will start rating vendors and factories on how they answered the scorecard’s sustainability questions.

沃尔玛也正在搞的供应商，均通过了公司的可持续价值网络，它汇集专家进行战略规划的目的，并通过零售商的新生活得更好的供应商记分卡。该记分卡，旨在衡量供应商的可持续性绩效，是值得的，因为沃尔玛一直在谈论竞彩足球app怎么下载2009年宣布stainability Index并推出了供应商的可持续发展评估。竞彩足球app怎么下载记分卡是由一组15个简单的可持续性问题，沃尔玛发送给所有的供应商。竞彩足球app怎么下载沃尔玛和山姆会员买家也将它集成到他们的购买决定，

Many suppliers who answered the 15 questions and heard little back from Walmart interpreted the non-response as a sign that the effort had died or been shelved, but in reality the public silence merely marked a prolonged gestation period. Knowing they couldn’t hold buyers and suppliers accountable until they had decent metrics, Walmart dived into deep development work with the竞彩足球app怎么下载可持续发展联盟(TSC) to create something that had never been done before: a robust system to measure the sustainability of hundreds of key products across the store.

Doubters of Walmart’s commitment to sustainability would be wise to note the retailer’slatest Sustainability Milestone Meeting9月13日 - 中SVP of Sustainability Andrea Thomaspledged, “Both at Walmart and at Sam’s Club, we’re integrating the Index [and scorecard] into major product categories this year, continuing on next year.”

肖恩·鲍德温，在山姆会员店商品销售的高级副总裁，描述了他的新生活得更好记分卡的方式，以方便商户和供应商的沟通与热情“去问题更快的心脏。”He also pointed out a fact that no supplier should miss: “What we measure at Walmart and Sam’s gets done … what we recognize and incent for becomes part of our culture … and … starting the next fiscal year, every single merchant at Sam’s will have a component for sustainability on their performance review.”

Despite mounting evidence that commitment to sustainability is deepening and accelerating in the retail world, many suppliers have been slow to shift out of neutral gear. Some adopted "wait-and-see" holding patterns while the dust settled, reasoning that “once our customers sort out all these requests, initiatives and standards, then we’ll start moving.” Others made no secret of their plans to do as little as possible, because they assumed sustainability would fade in importance. The effective logic of this group was, "This is just another fad; retailers won't care about this next year" and, "We get a different buyer every few years; the next one probably won't care about this."

If you are a retail supplier, a simple test will reveal whether the wait-and-see approach is right for you. We pose this question to all our clients who are on the fence about how seriously they should commit to sustainability: Are you willing to bet the future of your business on the chance that retailers will suddenly stop caring about sustainability?

Here's some other questions to consider:

• Is the customer of tomorrow likely to care more or care less about sustainability than the customer of today?
• Are product contents and manufacturing locations likely to be more visible or less visible to retailers and the public 10 years from now?
• 是像能源，清洁水和原材料可能会增加或减少在可预见的未来至关重要的投入成本？

If you're a wait-and-see company, your future viability may depend on a perfect storm of unlikely events -- that retail buyers and the consumers to whom they respond will suddenly stop learning and caring about resource costs, the health of people and the planet and the future of their children.

We urge you to ask just one more question: Is that a risk you’re willing to take?

仓库货架的图像通过Aleph Studiovia Shutterstock