Corporate social responsibility

Ok so here I am on the train back from the city trying to recall the seminar I have sat through this afternoon on CSR and ethics. Personally I think the 2 things are absolutely intertwined and we need to be sure they are both adhered to. It was interesting listening to Tom from Sedex, Martin from ETI delivering content based on our clients demands. Both organisations grow based on the basis of peer pressure, if so and so does it en we nuts also do it. How many of these organisations are doing it from a philanthropic base rather than a what's in it for me base remains to be seen? It is this that concerns me the most because I really do care, but I am being forced to comply with oodles of red tape that is really difficult to understand. Anyone tried to supply goods to LOCOG?(London Olympics 2012) If so you know what I mean! Somewhere along the supply chain must come the sharing of this data to allow more than one company to benefit from the social audit that has been carried out by an independent assessment firm of a particular factory. Rather than all of us doing the same audit over and over again. This is where Sedex really could come into it's own. The cost to industry of compliance is huge and still growing, so come on big business do you really need that extra bit of Social Accountability or will the one carried out a few months ago by another company suffice?

So interestingly in a room of 40 or so people only around 10-12 promotional products distributors were represented. Does that mean that only 0.5% of our industry cares about this topic or is it just those that are being forced to comply that were there? It scares me a little about the cost of these compliance issues, who will pay. Will it be the end user who may be driving down the price of a product whilst asking for more and more compliance and quality. With a 'grown up discussion' it may well be, but this will only be true of certain corporate who really do get the whole 'partnership ethos.'. I guess in reality it will be the distributor who will continue to have their margin eroded to conform to our clients needs.

Listening to both a supplier and distributor ( direct competitor but a really good firm!) give a presentation each on what it means to them, I can see that it is not just me that is fearful about the reasons why we are being asked for so much compliance. This is going to be one hell of a learning curve with many companies doing it differently to one another. Clearly this means that the client will have options, but not necessarily being able to compare 'apples with apples'. As with most things in life there are many companies out there offering different levels of compliance, this is due to the different market forces but ultimately with audits you get what you pay for! So beware of people offering really cheap audits because if it looks too good to be true, it probably is!

We must all remember that Social Accountability is not just about child labour there are many other aspects and we at Merchandise Mania check for them all.

I would be really interested to hear back from anyone with experience in this area.

Thanks

Simon





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Some Credit Crunch Tips For Business!

So I was minding my own business. Well actually trying to manage my own business when I received a mail from my Bank Relationship Manager asking if I could help her out. Imagine my surprise, it is most definitely me asking the Bank for help not the other way round! Needless to say I decided to do what was being asked of me and there are 2 versions in this blog. The first is the full article from HSBC and the second is the edited version of just little old me!!!!

I hope it helps someone!!!

Just Little Ole Me!!

The First day of the rest of your life!!!

So there I was reading through a colleagues blog earlier today (http://paulsmania.blogspot.com/) when I found myself thinking, 'You know what Simon, you should really do one of those!' Then the panic, and the self doubt. What will I say, how will it sound, will anyone actually read it. After careful consideration I decided that none of that mattered and as part of my ongoing learning I would jump right into it.

So what the heck is all this about I here you ask, well simply put I will be imparting my, possibly useless, knowledge in the blog. Along with my business experiences, even down to the simple don’t try this at home type of thing. It pains me to say so, but I have made many, many mistakes in my life. Some have definitely been larger than others. My philosophy is that your gut is usually right, unless of course you had a serious curry the night before, so trust it and act quickly. If you don’t act, someone else will. This works in good times as well as in bad. An example within Merchandise Mania would be my missus, Lisa, coming up with the idea for Recycled Mania. This was specifically to provide services that were only available in a limited way from other companies. What it meant to our customers was that they could find leading edge environmentally friendly products from us, a good six months before the general market could get close. We were manufacturing fleece made from 22 plastic water bottles before 90% of the High Street stores. Of course the important thing from this for our customers was that they were way ahead of their competition in terms of creativity, and ethical accountability……Priceless!

Ok, so I guess the first one is at an end….keep checking back and lets see if we can learn together.