Responsible Sourcing and Manufacturing Practices
In line with our Target Forward vision, we are committed to pursuing fair, responsible and equitable supply chain practices. This includes measures to further responsible purchasing, broaden the diversity of our suppliers, elevate worker well-being across our supply chain and implement effective traceability measures.
Our commitment to responsible business conduct extends to our expectations for our domestic and international suppliers. We have several mechanisms in place to provide guidance on implementing Target’s policies and practices for responsible business conduct, including Target’s Standards of Vendor Engagement (SOVE), our Applying Target’s SOVE manual, vendor trainings and our Responsible Sourcing and Sustainability inbox.
Driving impact beyond compliance
Driven by our Target Forward vision, we are committed to a sustainable and inclusive supply chain that is just and equitable for all workers.
We advance this aim through our Just & Equitable Supply Chain (JESC) goals and alongside our vendors, factories and partners across the globe.
We plan that by the end of 2025:
- 100% of owned brand suppliers will have policies and programs to advance gender equity.
- 100% of owned brand suppliers will pay workers digitally.
The Just & Equitable Supply Chain (JESC) goals work together to improve working conditions and drive sustainable change. Creating a just and equitable supply chain benefits all workers and will require a holistic approach. Therefore, we are focusing on four levers as part of our JESC goal strategy:
- Equitable systems for hiring and advancement
- Financial security (inclusive of digital wages goal)
- Effective anonymous channels for incident reporting (also known as grievance mechanisms)
- Access to gender-responsive health information and service
In 2023, we developed a variety of tools, including the JESC Toolkit, Business Partner Activation Guide and Action Planning Tool, to support suppliers’ participation in our JESC continuous improvement cycle and advance progress toward our goals. We encourage our suppliers to review the resources to understand our requirements, conduct a gap assessment and build an action plan using provided resources to achieve all requirements by the end of 2025. We also implemented a regionalized training approach for sourcing teams and suppliers to support broader adoption and implementation of our JESC goals, which we customized to meet specific country needs.
Gender equity goal
Women are an essential part of global supply chains — yet they occupy some of the lowest-paid and most insecure jobs which, combined with unsafe working conditions and limited bargaining power, make them more vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence. Empowering women in the supply chain presents an incredible opportunity not only to improve the lives of people making, selling, and buying products, but enhances the resilience of supply chains.
Digital wage goal
We believe transitioning from cash to digital wage payment systems is a critical step in the path towards financial inclusion for workers — particularly women — and to cost savings and improved efficiency for suppliers, as well as increased transparency for Target.
Partnerships
We engage with strategic stakeholders to address issues that matter to supply chain workers. We believe collaboration leads to greater impact, especially when it comes to achieving our 2025 goals and beyond. This is why we focus on building meaningful partnerships with industry stakeholders, nonprofit organizations and other brands.
Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA)
We became a member of this UN-based alliance in 2022 and continued our engagement in 2023 to support our commitment that all tier 1 owned brand suppliers pay workers digitally by 2025, following responsible practices.
RISE
Target continues to serve as a member of the Leaders Circle for RISE, an initiative designed to support collaborative industry action at scale to advance gender equality in global garment, footwear and home textiles supply chains. Each year Target supports 15 to 20 suppliers to participate in RISE’s in-factory worker empowerment training across Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.
CARE
Through our partnership with CARE Impact Partners, we are contributing to building industry capabilities to address barriers to gender equity. We are implementing an empower, test, and learn in-factory program strategy in seven factories and are sponsoring the Gender Equity Network (GEN) — a peer learning platform for suppliers — to which we have nominated 17 suppliers and recruited five other brands to nominate an additional 21 suppliers
Nest
In 2016, Target began a partnership with nonprofit Nest to serve the fashion and home industry’s global workforce who craft products in their homes or outside the traditional four-walled factory. Together, we developed industry-aligned standards — the Nest Standards for Homes and Small Workshops — which protect homeworkers’ safety, well-being and prosperity while giving brands visibility to the artisans in their supply chains. To date, Nest’s programs have reached more than 1,600 artisan businesses around the globe.
We also teamed up with Nest to create clearer indicators for consumers that their products are ethically handcrafted. In 2018, the Nest Seal made its retail debut thanks to the Nest Ethical Handcraft Program and is now located on select items at Target — including handwoven baskets — and we look forward to seeing it on more products in coming years. To earn the Nest Seal, the handcraft business producing the products must meet a set of rigorous compliance standards.
Training & assessment
Through our partnership with Better Buying, a nonprofit organization focused on improving purchasing practices throughout the global supply chain, we receive anonymous vendor feedback as part of an annual survey to help us better understand how our day-to-day purchasing practices are affecting our suppliers, their workers and the environment. In 2023, we also surveyed our internal teams to understand our practices from their perspective. Insights from both surveys helped prioritize 2024 actions and are informing the continued development of our processes and strategy.
Also in partnership with Better Buying, in 2022, we rolled out a new educational training course to help teams across the enterprise understand what purchasing practices are, why they are essential and how decisions can impact workers worldwide.