Our approach to materiality

In an ever-changing and uncertain world, materiality helps us pinpoint and focus on the sustainability issues that matter most to our business and stakeholders, allowing us to identify opportunities and make decisions more effectively.

In particular, materiality has been essential in bringing credible insights to the development of our Fashion FWD sustainability strategy. It has shown us where we must focus our efforts and steered the goals and targets that we have set. Importantly, it helped challenge existing assumptions, brought insights into the long-term direction we need to take, and helped include our stakeholders inside and outside the business on our journey.

We conducted an in-depth analysis of business impacts and used insights to gauge the relative importance of each issue, conducting interviews with internal and external stakeholders. We referred to numerous external frameworks including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).

WHAT THE UN SDGS MEAN TO BESTSELLER

The UN SDGs are important to sustainability at BESTSELLER as they are the global blueprint for a better and more sustainable future for all.

We believe our sustainability efforts should consider all 17 SDGs. In particular, BESTSELLER’s Fashion FWD strategy supports and aligns with a number of SDGs in the regions where we operate and where our products are manufactured. These SDGs include:

SDG 5: Gender Equality

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

SDG 13: Climate Action

SDG 15: Life on land

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

For these goals, we seek to minimise negative impacts and work to positively contribute to their fulfilment. They have been particularly important in helping us calibrate our long-term ambitions, ensuring we are setting our aspirations in line with the wider global agenda.

Our own goal timelines are nearer term (with the exception of our commitment to science based targets on greenhouse gas emissions where we will be setting near-term and long-term goals) in order to stimulate action at speed across our business, and these will be our focus. At the same time, we are also motivated to contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in a holistic way and recognise it as a common language for sustainable development that can facilitate exchange and action across the apparel value chain and wider business ecosystem. Therefore, we will continue to use all the SDGs to guide our journey going forward.