Trust and compliance · Responsible sourcing
Retailers, investors and European due-diligence rules push supplier questions down the chain to whoever is producing the goods. This page sets out the six questions a supplier pack normally has to answer, which of them we can evidence for your order, and which claims we deliberately do not make.
The pack, question by question
Every retailer questionnaire, investor folder and due-diligence file comes back to the same six questions. The wording changes; the substance does not.
A pack has to name the production unit, not the trading layer above it: which site handled your order, which part of it, and the commercial relationship between that site and us. "We work with many factories" answers none of it.
Undisclosed subcontracting is the most common reason a supplier fails an audit. Where an operation such as embroidery, printing or washing runs in a specialist unit, it is recorded in the order file rather than discovered at audit.
Legal employment, working hours, wages, health and safety, and the absence of forced or child labour. The evidence is a current audit report from the unit concerned — a sentence on a website is not evidence of anything.
Your own supplier code, signed by the unit doing the work and held with the order file, so the conditions you set are the conditions the unit was engaged under.
Fibre content and restricted-substance requirements differ by destination market. Composition, colourfastness and restricted-substance testing is arranged through accredited third-party laboratories in the format your market requires.
Production and inspection records, the approved sample reference and the material record behind the order — enough to trace a finished garment back to its materials and the unit that made it.
How we work with your pack
A pack assembled after the fact is a reconstruction. Each of these steps is settled while the order can still be changed.
Send the pack your retailer, investor or compliance team actually uses. It is completed against the order in front of us — category, units, materials, destination market — rather than filed from a generic form.
The pack states which production unit is proposed for your order, what it was qualified on for the style, and which operations sit outside it. That answer is written down before the order is placed, not reconstructed at audit.
Current audit reports for the unit and material test reports relevant to your category are passed to you for review before the order is placed — scope, issuing body and expiry date are yours to check.
Specialist processes such as embroidery, printing, washing or embellishment are part of the order record where they apply, including which site performs them.
We supply the documents and answer the follow-up questions. Whether the evidence satisfies your retailer, your investor or your regulator is a determination made inside your own due-diligence process or by your nominated auditor.
Where our evidence stops
The useful part of a due-diligence answer is knowing its boundary. These are ours, stated before you ask.
No BSCI, Sedex, SA8000 or ISO certificate is presented on this site as HACOLD's own. Where a unit holds a current audit report, the document is shared for your review rather than summarised as a badge.
A certification held by a fabric mill or a specialist workshop covers what that party did — it does not certify the finished garment, and it is not a certification of HACOLD. Chain of custody is what connects the two, and it is the part that fails audits when nobody kept the record.
Where a category, a market or a unit has no current audit, the answer says so. Describing an unaudited unit as compliant would help nobody except at the moment of the sale.
This page explains what can be evidenced and how. It is not legal advice, not a certification of compliance, and not a substitute for your own verification or your advisers.
Questions before the next step
These answers define the decision boundary for this page. Commercial terms and factory-specific feasibility still require project review.
We publish no standing certification claim for HACOLD. What matters for your file is the current position of the production unit making your order and of the mills behind its materials. Those documents are confirmed and shared for review before the order is placed — and where a unit has no current report, that is what we tell you.
Yes. A third-party audit or your own checklist can be scheduled through HACOLD against the unit handling your order, arranged around your dates and the production stage. The order record names the unit, so there is no ambiguity about which site is being reviewed.
Business identity and the production unit planned for the order, a current social-compliance audit report where your market or buyer requires one, product test reports for the category, and the inspection procedure the unit follows. Availability is confirmed per category and per order — we do not publish a document list as a standing promise.
HACOLD is accountable for the order record: which unit makes your order, what was disclosed about it, and how a finding is answered. Where a unit fails your audit, the next step — corrective action or routing the order to a different qualified unit — is agreed with you before production proceeds, and the outcome is written into the order file.
From research to a useful brief
You do not need every answer before the first conversation. Share the product direction, available files, quality expectations and known commercial context.