Fair Labor Association, the Better Buying organization, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Accelerating Circularity – it goes on. “There’s a whole long list,” Noonan says. “Back to where we are different from other players, and where we are, call it quietly leading from our little place here in Issaquah, Washington.” Lott says the intense focus on a positive supply chain began before he arrived as a fulltime employee. By the late 1990s, a spotlight was being shined on major brands that derived their products from child labor. “We recognized that as soon as this shirt left our warehouse and it got a logo, it stopped being a SanMar shirt, and it started being pick-yourorganization,” he says. “We had a responsibility to those people to make sure that that product was made in a responsible way.” In the years since, the company has taken a proactive approach to more than the products themselves. The 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh was an eye-opener for Lott. More than 1,100 people died in the garment factory disaster. While SanMar products weren’t in that factory, it wouldn’t be implausible to think that they might have been. “There was an old saying in garment production: It wasn’t the factory you thought your product was produced in that was the problem, it was the one you didn’t know, because products would get outsourced,” Lott says. “When that happened, it was a soul-searching moment for me. I thought, gosh, are we part of this global problem that is exploitive of people, that’s dangerous, that’s unsustainable? “We made a really conscious decision as a company ... to say it’s not good enough for us to just not do bad things and have an auditing program to make sure we’re not doing bad things. We need to make sure that we are doing good things in the world and that we are a positive influence in the communities of the people who make our products and for our customers and the communities that they’re in.” This idea became the basis for what has evolved into SanMar’s current motto, “Together, for Good.” Along with the impact it aims to make in the places where its products are sourced and manufactured, the phrase also defines SanMar’s hope for the length of the vendor and client relationships it develops. Growing Together When Mike Knapick joined SanMar as its chief information officer in 2014, the company Suppliers | Must Read SanMar's responsibility earns High Marks, scoring among the best of all PPAI 100 suppliers. PPAI • JULY 2023 • 45
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