Fashion’s Most Under – rated Sustainability Lever Isn’t In The Factory — It’s In The Order Book

Materials get the sustainability headlines. But the supplier list, argues a Berlin wholesale founder, is where fashion’s quietest sustainability fight is actually happening.

By Irada Ibragimova

After years running Kauffritz, the Berlin-based B2B wholesale partner I founded to supply independent fashion, beauty and sport retailers across the UK, the EU and international export markets in Asia, MENA and Latin America, I’ve come to believe the sustainability conversation in fashion is missing something obvious. Talk to anyone in fashion about sustainability and it goes straight to materials. Organic cotton, recycled polyester, deadstock, regenerative wool. All worth talking about — and I’m glad we’re talking about them. But the most under-rated sustainability lever in our industry sits somewhere far less photogenic: the supplier list.

Most independent fashion retailers I know are working with too many suppliers. Eight, ten, sometimes more, across overlapping categories. Each one comes with its own delivery rhythm, its own minimum order, its own returns policy, its own portal to log into. Nobody in a small buying team has the time to plan a season around that mess — so what they actually end up doing is over-ordering to clear free-shipping thresholds, under-ordering on the items that need a top-up later, and quietly accepting that some of those boxes are going to end their lives on a clearance rail or, worse, in landfill.

That’s where the real fashion waste lives, in my experience. Not in the factory. In the order book.

A consolidated wholesale relationship — fewer suppliers, more categories per supplier, longer contracts — quietly rewrites that maths. You order what your shop actually needs, not what triggers the next discount tier. You can adjust an order in week six without renegotiating five separate contracts. The supplier on the other side of the call has real skin in your business beyond the next quarter — because if you walk away, they lose three product groups, not one. That’s a fundamentally different kind of conversation, and it pulls almost every decision in a more thoughtful direction.

It’s a conversation I think UK independents in particular should be having out loud right now. Post-Brexit sourcing has been an exercise in patience for the UK indie fashion community, and the instinct, understandably, has been to fragment supplier relationships further — to spread risk across more vendors. I’d argue the opposite. The post-Brexit period is exactly when UK fashion retailers should consolidate to fewer, more strategic European partners, not more of them. Less paperwork, fewer customs surprises, one shipping rhythm to plan around instead of seven.

Most of our conversations with UK indies in 2026 are some version of this exact problem. Can we get our beauty SKUs and fashion accessories shipped through the same logistical pipe? Can we plan a twelve-month delivery cadence without renegotiating every quarter? Can we just speak to one person who actually knows the account? The honest answer to all three is yes — and every time someone walks through that checklist with relief, I think: we’ve just had a sustainability conversation without using the word once.

Sustainable fashion isn’t only about what’s in the fabric. It’s also about whether the wider system encourages long-term thinking or short-term scrambling. A buyer who can plan twelve months at a time — with one phone number to call when something goes sideways — ends up making more sustainable decisions almost by accident. Fewer rush airfreight shipments. Fewer fire-sale discounts. Fewer dead lines hanging on the rail in March because someone ordered three minimums in November to qualify for the lower price-tier.

That isn’t a sustainability strategy. That’s just a properly designed supplier list. Which is exactly the point.

If you run an independent fashion business in the UK and you’ve been thinking about sustainability mainly through your fabric mix — good. Keep doing it. But also look at your supplier list. Count the names. Ask yourself whether any of them really know your shop. The most boring sustainability decision you’ll make this year might be the one that quietly does the most actual work.

About the author

Irada Ibragimova is the founding managing director of Kauffritz, a Berlin-based B2B wholesale partner supplying parfumerie, beauty, fashion and sport assortments to independent retailers and online shops internationally — across the EU, the UK, Asia, MENA and Latin America — as a consolidated multi-category wholesale and export operation.

Top image by Kaboompics