Cascale has unveiled the Better Buying 2025 Garment Industry Scorecard, a benchmarking tool designed to assess annual advancements in purchasing practices among brands and retailers in the global apparel sector.
The overall score for purchasing practices fell slightly from 67 to 66, with most categories experiencing a drop of one or two points, reflecting a troubling lack of progress.
This stagnancy occurs during a time of considerable global and geopolitical turmoil, particularly amidst ongoing uncertainties surrounding trade tariffs. The most notable decline was observed in the Planning and Forecasting category, which decreased from 59 to 56 points. More than 37% of suppliers identified this area as the top priority for improvement.
The Scorecard draws on anonymous feedback from over 1,200 suppliers who participated in the 2025 Better Buying Purchasing Practices Index (BBPPI) ratings cycle. It evaluates performance across seven essential purchasing practice categories that significantly influence suppliers’ ability to provide fair working conditions and wages.
The suppliers involved collectively represent more than 10 million workers, approximately one-sixth of the estimated 60 million individuals employed within the global apparel supply chain.
Katie Hess, head of the Better Buying product at Cascale, stated, “The BBPPI scores provide us with a critical baseline on where we are, as an industry, on purchasing practices. I’m pleased to see that brand and retailer progress has been broadly maintained, even during a period of unprecedented global and geopolitical turbulence as a result of the ongoing trade tariffs uncertainty. However, at this late stage in the game, stagnation is not good enough. The urgent need for collective, committed, whole-industry action on purchasing practices is starkly clear.”
The release of the Garment Industry Scorecard represents the first since Better Buying merged with Cascale in February 2025, providing initial insights ahead of the detailed BBPPI Report. This in-depth report will explore the factors influencing these scores and is set to be published during Cascale’s Annual Meeting in Hong Kong from September 15-17, 2025.
Fiona Sadler, a Cascale board director representing brands and retailers and the global head of responsible sourcing at Marks and Spencer, remarked, “With Better Buying now part of Cascale, we have an unprecedented opportunity to drive action at scale by bringing together all key stakeholders to embed fair purchasing principles as the norm in global supply chains and achieve our mission of Decent Work for All.”
