Sustainable-fashion certification, since Brandix and MAS have the factories and the world wants the proof

Sri Lankans make the world's underwear to the world's standard, and the country has no fashion brand of its own that the world has heard of.

Write a one-page checklist of what a buyer abroad would need to see before trusting a factory's sustainability claim, and test it on two sustainability managers at factories and two buyers from fashion brands. Ask each whether they would pay for an independent audit against it. A buyer's yes is the proof that the certificate has value.

Who pays first

A factory that already runs to a high standard and needs a credible certificate to show buyers, in place of its own claims.

What leaves today

The factories have the practice but not always the proof buyers ask for; a certificate issued here turns good practice into a price premium.

That your checklist is independent, that auditors have no stake in the factories audited, and what claims a certificate may make without misleading buyers.

Brandix, Batticaloa. Chapter Three

"Brandix's factory at Batticaloa, in the east, became the first certified net-zero-carbon apparel factory in the world in 2019."

The factories already hold world firsts; independent proof is what buyers will pay to see.

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?