The Pulse Report was co-developed with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm and one of the world’s leading advisor on business strategy, and Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), the coalition that has developed the Higg Index, a suite of tools that standardises value chain sustainability measurement for all industry participants.

As of today, the sustainability ‘pulse’ of the industry is weak. The newly developed global Pulse Score, a health measure for the sector, is only 32 out of 100. The industry is not yet where it could and should be. The spread of performance is also quite large. The best performers on sustainability are the very big players as well as some mid-sized, family-owned companies, while over half of the market, mainly small to medium-sized players, has shown little effort so far. The rest of the industry is somewhere in between. This is confirmed by the Pulse Survey, where two-thirds of polled fashion executives have not made environmental and social factors guiding principles for their companies’ strategy.