Sustainability issues in international apparel companies: problems and success factors

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Sustainability issues in international apparel companies: problems and success factors



Background. Technological progress has never been so rapid, as it is in the last 20-30 years. People's needs develop daily, while the planet's sources are shortening. After 1990, there is more and more support for this theory, as production and pollution levels increase. Growing interest towards this topic can be found in the article of Sarango-Lalangui, P., Santos, J. & Hormiga, E. “The Development of Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research Field”. According to the authors, there are almost three times more articles on sustainability for the years 2015-2018 than 2012-2014, not speaking about previous years when the number of publications was insufficient (Sarango-Lalangui et. al., 2018).

Coming closer to the apparel industry, it should be said that ecological footprint, or harm, from these companies is colossal.

They waste and pollute water by getting cotton which is the main element of the majority of clothes and needs much water. For example, to get 1 kg of it, it is needed 10 000 liters of water. Pollution is caused by wastes which are thrown back into rivers after washing clothes items. Toxic substances kill animals and other living organisms (Project Cece, 2019). Thus, comparing apparel with food industry, we can see enormous water consumption from clothing manufacturing. For example, to receive a pair of jeans 8000 liters of water are required, while production of a portion of cheese, pork or chicken takes less than 1000 liters (Hoekstra, 2008).

Moreover, the majority of operations in clothes production create harmful emissions into the atmosphere. High temperature drying, bleaching, colouring of apparel bring massive amounts of daily chemicals into the air (Fabric of the World, 2016).

What is more, a medium consumer these days buys 60% more items of clothes than 20 years ago and 35% of all materials finish their existence as a waste before even reaching the customer. The waste problem in apparel industry is also alarming (Kerr & Landry, 2017).

Besides that the implementation of sustainable practices is crucial for saving the environmental and social balance in the world, there is a plenty of scientific papers aiming to proof the profitability of sustainability instruments. To start with, in some industries efforts in making more sustainable production processes lead to the significant decrease of overall production costs. Moreover, the implementation of environmentally and socially responsible programs positively affect company's brand, and it may subsequently lead to strengthen of customer relationships and increase of sales. It is also important to mention the probable positive impact of fair labor conditions' maintenance: the efficiency of employees may increase, leading again to multiple benefits for the company (Baraka, 2017; Whitson, 2002; Andel, 2014; Jones, 2017).

It seems like many international apparel companies started understanding the positive influence of sustainability practices on their businesses. This conclusion can be made after screening sustainability reports of such companies, where in most cases all sustainability KPIs (for instance, water consumption, size of CO2 footprint, etc.) become better. However, it is obvious that apparel companies have different rates of success in field of sustainability. In reality we have a certain number of industry sustainability leaders, and other businesses that are not considered as leaders in this field by experts and the society.

Problem statement. The problem of this work is in an inability of some apparel companies to become more sustainable. Thus, the goal of this paper is to identify the key problems and success factors of sustainable development in international apparel industry.

In accordance with this goal, the tasks are the following:

1. Identify the most common sustainability concepts used in the clothing industry.

2. Determine problems that international apparel companies face while implementing sustainability strategy, basing on scientific literature analysis.

3. Develop the model of success factors that influence the degree of companies' sustainability, basing on scientific literature analysis.

4. Check the influence of determined success factors using statistical tools.

5. Develop recommendations for increasing the level of sustainability for different companies.

The object of the study is apparel companies; the subject is sustainability issues in apparel companies.

Professional significance. The received results will demonstrate the gap between the companies with a successful implementation of sustainability techniques and the companies located at a low level of such development, but willing to increase it. Final recommendations can help firms to become more conscientious and improve economic, social and environmental situation inside and outside them.

The research novelty of this work is in methods of analyzing apparel companies and their sustainability levels.

Delimitations of the study. In this study we will observe international apparel companies and various factors affecting their operations in sustainability affairs. Special attention will be paid towards the difference between the companies of contrasting degrees of sustainability achievement.



1.Literature review

1.1 Basic theoretical background of sustainability

Before analyzing issues of sustainability, we should outline its definition. According to the “Our Common Future” report, sustainable development is about meeting the needs of the present without depriving future generations of such ability (Binder & Belz, 2014). There are various approaches towards this topic, the most wide-spread ones will be examined in this chapter.

Sustainable entrepreneurship

Concerning sustainable entrepreneurship, it is based on three kinds of entrepreneurship: conventional, environmental and social one (Binder & Belz, 2014). The given three terms can be presented in a shape of triangle (Figure 1) and will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

Figure 1. Elements of sustainable entrepreneurship (Binder & Belz, 2014).

Conventional entrepreneurship implies searching for opportunities to create goods and services (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). There are three categories of such opportunities: production of new information, exploitation of market inefficiencies, and the best use of alternative resources (Drucker, 1985). Thus, entrepreneurs may get profits by creating something new, taking advantage of competitors' mistakes and carelessness, or by doing the same as competitors in a more efficient way.

The term `environmental entrepreneurship' became popular with technological development in the early 1990s when our planet started suffering greatly. The mission of such entrepreneurs is to both create environmental value and make profit on it. The difference from conventional entrepreneurship is in searching for opportunities specifically in the markets with environmental failures (Linnanen, 2002).

The last but not the least element of sustainable entrepreneurship is social entrepreneurship, which aim is to construct and maintain social values. Such activity can be conducted in non-profit, profit and hybrid forms (Post & Waddock, 1991).

Sustainability Hierarchy

Sustainability Hierarchy is presented in Figure 2. It is similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, where primary necessitates are placed at the bottom and should be satisfied before the upper ones.

Figure 2. Sustainability Hierarchy (Marshall & Toffel, 2005).



The first level is about survival of human beings, and it must be taken care of first of all. The second level deals with people's health, such as degradation of ozone layer and pollution. Level three is divided into two equal parts: preservation of other forms of life and protection of human rights. At last, top-level of Hierarchy should be fulfilled only in case all the other three levels are satisfied. This is rather controversial layer and causes a lot of disagreement, as it concerns values and beliefs, which differ from person to person (Marshall & Toffel, 2005).

Ecological footprinting framework

An Ecological Footprint is an estimation of the volume of bioproductive area necessary to support a human's lifestyle. It contains the land to grow food and produce goods, allocate rubbish and absorb carbon emissions. The richer the place - the bigger footprint is. People from developed countries purchase more houses, cars, clothes and food. It can be observed in Table 1 (Calcott & Bull, 2007).

Table 1. Consumption of countries with different standards of living. Source: www.cia.gov.

In 1980-1990, consumption and planet's abilities were nearly equal. However, now there are less sources on the planet than we need. Humanity's ecological footprint can be seen in Figure 3 (Footprint Network, 2006).



Figure 3. Humanity's ecological footprint. Source: footprintnetwork.org

1.2 Challenges of sustainable development

Achievement of sustainable development seems rather difficult due to the following factors:

1. Economic instability. Incomes imparity resulted in a small amount of people controlling the major part of natural resources. As long as holders possess them and receive great earnings, it will be challenging to decrease the level of material extraction.

2. Population growth. As a result of this, level of world's consumption raises, and resources pool remains emptying.

3. Consumption per person growth. In addition to population increase, demand and consumption in developed countries per person also goes up.

4. Energy use. For the last fifty years, global energy use has boosted by nearly 70 per cent and it is still continuing to grow. Technical progress gives people comfort, but requires more energy sources.

5. Poverty and its consequences. Massive difference between the rich and the poor leads to extremely low level of life in some places, where people experience hunger, diseases and crime (Dalal-Clayton & Bass, 2002).



1.3 Factors developing sustainability

One of the approaches to increase sustainability is The Natural Step. It is a technique for organizational planning, which enables companies to combine environmental and social issues with strategic and operational decisions.

The Natural Step Framework consists of three key elements:

1. The Funnel to visualize the resources extinction and growing demand. At present the walls of the mechanism are narrowing, but in the future with technological development and innovations they may become stable and wide. (Figure 4)

Figure 4. Sustainability Funnel. Source: naturalstep.org

2. System Conditions that must be met to have a sustainable society. There are four such systems:

a. Substances from lithosphere do not increase in biosphere. In the companies it can be implemented in transport, metals, energy etc. For example, by shortening the way from warehouses to the customer, using renewable resources and recyclable metals.

b. Substances produced by humans must not increase in the biosphere. It can be achieved by declining the amount of waste and by replacing synthetic materials with biodegradable alternatives.

c. Nature's functions are not distressed by physical displacement, overusing, and other ways of manipulation, as it leads to the destruction of biosphere.

d. Resources must be used honestly and efficiently to meet essential human needs all over the world.

3. Implementation Methodology to know how these systems can be applied. Therefore, ABCD approach was developed to help organizations implement sustainability theories into their activities.

A stands for Awareness. Before solving the problem, companies need to understand the scale of the catastrophe and possible resolutions. Thus, a number of sources were developed to show entrepreneurs how business can be managed in sustainable and prosperous way.

B indicates Baseline Mapping. After realizing the global situation, managers should explore their own activities with Sustainability Gap Analysis to determine critical matters and problems in their organizations.

C means Creating a Vision. This vision is about living in a sustainable world and being a sustainable enterprise. A strategic plan on further improvement is developed at this stage.

D is for Down to Action. This is a gradual implementation of operations to achieve the presented vision of sustainable future (Rosenblum, 2000).

1.4 Sustainability issues in Apparel Industry

Sustainability is quite a wide concept, including Corporate Social Responsibility, Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship and other theoretical approaches. Thus, there is a huge amount of issues the society tries to solve by implementation of sustainability practices, and the main list of such issues is reflected in the list of Sustainable Development Goals, created by the United Nations (United Nations, 2015).

However, some specific features and accents can be found in any industry. It has been stated that the most discussing issues of the apparel industry are the following: environmental degradation, harmful chemicals, low wages, violations of labor law and child labor (Fletcher, 2008; Arasinah et.al., 2018a).

Environmental degradation is, undoubtedly, the most crucial problem of the apparel industry. As it was already mentioned in the Background of the research, apparel companies pollute the environment by chemicals, carbon dioxide and by usage of extreme amount of water. Some experts put the fashion industry on the first place in the rating of the most dangerous source of the world pollution (Saha et.al., 2019).

The situation becomes worse with the increasing popularity of “fast fashion” concept. The needs of the consumer start changing rapidly, and lots of companies started trying to change as fast as these needs and preferences. For example, we can look at Zara, where 75% of all clothes items in one particular shop are replaced by new items in 3-4 weeks. As a sequence, the volume of garbage increases rapidly, and the same thing happens with the amount of raw materials such companies use (Saricam et.al., 2017).

We have mentioned before the profitability of sustainability practices implementation has been proved by several scientific works. Then, what prevents apparel businesses from doing profitable strategic moves? Shafie S. and Kamis A. in their article “The Sustainability in the Industry of Green Apparel: Are We Ready?” figure out four main factors preventing companies from sustainable production. These factors are extracted from the information received during interviews with six experts in apparel industry operations.

1. Materials and resources

It is difficult procedure to find appropriate materials for production to make it in sustainable way. Indeed, there are some existing and available kinds of raw materials, but they bring certain limitations to the design of clothes, and it becomes complicated to make such clothes appealing to customers.

2.Price

The problem is that to develop new ecologically friendly materials for clothes production the enormous investment in R&D has to be done. Moreover, after receiving new materials the whole production cycle should be restructured due to changes in material suppliers, technology of new material treatment, etc. Thus, the price for the final consumer increases significantly, and apparel consumer are extremely sensitive to price in current conditions of mass-market.

3. Awareness

It seems like not agents influencing the development of the industry are aware of all the sustainability issues it faces. Therefore, the important duty of educational systems is to increase the awareness rate about sustainability issues in the world and in particular industries.

4. Personal responsibility

The willingness of people to change the industry to more sustainable degree is obviously a vital factor for changing the situation. However, this factor concerns not only CEOs of apparel companies, but also designers (as they shape fashion trends and influence both consumers and producers) and each consumer individually (customers have power to change the unsustainable behavior of apparel companies by choosing only “good” companies for buying clothes).

Authors of the article also mention it is important to take into account the following factors: the quality of suppliers (are the suppliers ready to work according to sustainability goals and issues) and the state as the permanent regulator of all business relationships (Shafie & Kamis, 2019).

Another work titled “Sustainable Incremental Organizational Change--A Case of the Textile and Apparel Industry” and written by Patora-Wysocka Z. and Suіkowski Ј. extracts four main directions for changing the company towards sustainable development. Actually, these directions are perfectly correlated with basic sustainability issues in the apparel industry:

1. Lowering the water consumption;

2. Lowering the usage of chemicals;

3. Old clothes recycling;

4. Involvement of designers and producers in changing the shape of the industry.

What is more, authors highlight the factors that increase the variance of using sustainability practices. In this list special accent is given to stock management (what company do to get rid of clothes it does not need anymore), treatment to non-standard orders (as a certain measure of company's flexibility), firm size and usage of new technologies (including instruments for online-sales and instruments for distribution and costs control) (Patora-Wysocka & Suіkowski, 2019).

Some researches are focused on specific areas and factors affecting sustainability. Thus, several papers that concentrate on business-model of apparel companies are considered. Holtstrцm J., Bjellerup C. and Eriksson J. in their paper “Business model development for sustainable apparel consumption” distinguish five key aspects of business model development for increased sustainability:

1. It is crucial to consider factors of external environment (for instance, the rate of urbanization and climate change in particular region).

2. Customer relations and behavior (it is necessary to try changing the customer behavior from “consuming” to “using”. This means customers should be much more involved in processes of buying and using the product, be more conscious about their consumption experience).

3. Persistence of each side involved in product creation to make it in sustainable way.

4. The technological solution must work as a web-based solution functioning on different platforms (this point is about the importance of availability of a website or app of apparel brand from different electronic devices).

5. The quality of the product (the product can be called sustainable if it has enough longevity. The longevity can be reached only if the product is considered as fashionable many seasons).

As a conclusion, authors claim apparel companies should reconsider their business-models from selling clothes to renting them. This strategic move can rapidly increase the sustainability rate of the industry, because the amount of resources circulating inside the production cycle will become much lower, and the number of garbage units will decrease at the same time. However, such change is recommended to implement gradually, as consumers should be firstly prepared for it (Holtstrцm et.al., 2019).

In other research regarding business-model business characteristics and CSR practices of `world class' apparel manufacturers have been identified. The authors made a number of interviews with CEOs, designers and other people possessing certain expertise in apparel industry. After analysis of the interviews' transcriptions, the list of practices has been conducted and structured based on the frequency of mentioning such practices by experts.

Table 2. Business characteristics and CSR practices of `world class' apparel manufacturers (Dickson & Chang, 2015).

As we can see, according to experts in the mentioned research paper, a plenty of different factors influence sustainability success of the company, but the most important are the following: management systems, taking ownership of Corporate Social Responsibility, focus on workers, transparency and CSR committee (Dickson & Chang, 2015).

Some research papers dive deeper into definite aspects of apparel business. Kцksal D., Strдhle J. and Mьller M. in the article “Social Sustainability in Apparel Supply Chains -- The Role of the Sourcing Intermediary in a Developing Country” make an effort to investigate the influence of central value chain links on the sustainable image of the final distributor. According to the results of the mentioned research, sourcing intermediaries play an extremely significant role in shaping sustainable production cycle and perform as key drivers of sustainable practices' implementation. Intermediaries are more involved in social part of sustainable development, taking responsibility of labor conditions on factories they make contracts with. Moreover, socially oriented intermediaries may smooth out the cultural differences between European retailers and Asian producers. However, the environmental impact could also be reached, as powerful intermediaries may add more ecological requirements for factories to be able to work with the retailers they have in partners (Kцksal et. al, 2018).

From the economical point of view, there are both positive sides and drawbacks in work with sourcing intermediaries for apparel retailers. On the one hand, it may become easier for retailers to organize their value chain with the help of the intermediary. This fact subsequently leads to the cost decrease for the final consumer, and we already know that price is one of the main sources of successful competition in today's apparel industry. What is more, some investments become available for apparel retailers with the decrease of transactional costs. Thus, it becomes possible for retailers to invest into solutions of social or environmental issues they or their clients have. This can be direct cash flow into R&D sphere or just an extra charity foundation: in any case the positive brand impression will be strengthened. On the other hand, the price may also become bigger for the end consumer, because sourcing intermediary is an additional business unit that should be paid for its work. Additionally, factories often reject from working with intermediaries because of the same cost increase. Such a situation may become the source of conflict that can be costly for all sides to resolve. Finally, working with the intermediary always means taking additional risk. Sourcing intermediaries take an enormous responsibility regarding sustainable issues: controlling all the necessary standards and policies each provider must stick to. At the same time, the failure of the intermediary in maintaining control or its misconduct may lead to significant loss of reputation by the retailer. It is vitally important for retailers to weight all possible pros and cons of work with sourcing intermediary, and the partner should be selected deliberately (Kцksal et. al, 2018).

The last but not the least factor that is vastly discussed by scientists drives us to technological issues of the apparel industry. As Denuwara N., Maijala J. and Hakovirta M. show in their paper “Sustainability Benefits of RFID Technology in the Apparel Industry”, the usage of modern technologies can lead to significant improvement in all aspects of the apparel business, including sustainable solutions. Specifically, RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification and it helps in the first place to optimize the logistic system by making it possible to track all the stock and sold items. Accordingly, the value chain is simplified, and we already know that it can possibly lead to sustainability improvements. Moreover, using of RFID means all companies' main operations become more transparent, as the consumer may use the track code of the clothing unit to easily identify where and how this item has been produced. It is also important to mention that the results of labor work become visible, so any problem or mistake source may be identified in order to change the situation as fast as possible. Statistics from RFID systems can potentially be used to control the statistical data on implemented system of recycling. This possibility may force governments to start using such systems to control the waste utilization by apparel companies on each stage of production process (Denuwara et. al., 2019).

As we could already be convinced, the degree of technological development in the company is one of key drivers of sustainable development. Technologies simplify control and management systems, so that people can see more rational ways for resources exploitation. Technological process also stands as a root of any innovation, and innovations in spheres of raw materials and special production facilities lead directly to decline of ecological footprint indicator.

1.5 Success Factors for Sustainability: fundamental research and cases of other industries

Although there is a sufficient number of research papers about sustainable practices in apparel industry, it is crucial for the current research to consider the situation with sustainable development in other industries. As author knows, no fulfilling models of critical success factors for sustainability have been made before. So, it may be useful somehow to reconstruct the experience of other industries to identify if there are some factors omitted from the apparel research field.

It is logically correct to begin with consideration of papers where research was not interrelated with any specific industry. Lalit K. Toke and Shyamkumar D. Kalpande tested fifteen critical success factors that could possibly influence green manufacturing in India. Indeed, the research possesses significant geographical limitation, but India is one of the main centers of manufacturing in apparel industry. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of manufacturing apparel capacities are distributed in Asian countries, so the results of the mentioned research may be suitable for the context of our paper.

The researchers were testing the following success factors: top management commitment (TMC), societal concern for protection of natural environment (SCP), government policies and regulations (GPR), eco-literacy amongst supply chain partners (EoL), customer satisfaction and involvement through environmental performance (CSI), environmental management system (EMS), proper workplace management (PWM), green product development (GPD), green procurement practices (GPP), availability of clean technology (ACT), economic interests and benefits from GM (EIB), ecolabelling of products (ELP), reverse logistics practices (RLP), lean manufacturing practices (LMP), competitiveness (COM) (Toke & Kalpande, 2019).

These criteria were evaluated by number of experts on how valuable they are for green manufacturing establishment. Finally, it was concluded that TMC is the most important factor, and SCP gets the second position. The lowest score has been noticed in COM, ELP and RLP. The overall ranking table is represented below (Toke & Kalpande, 2019).

Table 3.Summary of CSF's weightages (Toke & Kalpande, 2019).

Another research touched the topic of leading sustainability projects in companies. Doskoиil, R. and Lacko, B. made the analysis of advanced risk management and project knowledge as critical success factors of sustainability projects. The methodology of the research involved interviews with people responsible for sustainability development in companies on the area on Czech Republic. As in the previous case, it can be logically proved the solvency of this paper to serve the goals of our research, as most apparel headquarters are located in countries affected by European culture.

The authors concentrated on the post-project phases and developed the table of the most common reasons why companies fail to process such phases. This table was conducted basing on the interview analysis and the first part of it is represented below (Doskoиil & Lacko, 2018).



Table 4. The most common reasons why companies fail to process post-project phases of projects (Doskoиil & Lacko, 2018).

It can be noticed that almost all represented reasons are caused by underperforming of companies' management systems. The authors come up with the same conclusion. The researchers found out that some principles written in project standards like ISO 21500 are ignored by a number of companies, and, as a result, sustainability projects are failed (Doskoиil & Lacko, 2018).

The authors point out that the effectiveness of project management and risk management systems significantly influence the results of any project realization, and it especially true for difficult and large-scaled projects like those regarding sustainability. It is vitally important for project managers to pay extra attention for rules, standard and principles developed for management practices. The second thing that is extremely underestimated is the contribution of companies' knowledge sharing system. Being the part of project management methodology, the ability to effectively record and share knowledge about project procedures of the company makes it possible to minimize mistakes in the future and eliminate miscommunication between members of project teams (Doskoиil & Lacko, 2018).

Research papers about sustainability in other industries not only provide new insights in probable list of success factors, but also affirm some conclusions made in the research field of apparel industry. Thus, the work of Olawumi T. O. and Chan D. W. M. “Critical success factors for implementing building information modeling and sustainability practices in construction projects: A Delphi survey” is a direct confirmation that technological factor is one of keys for success in sustainability issues. The researchers extract thirty critical success factors for implementation of building information modeling - the set of technological instruments that simplify the process of construction projection. Meanwhile, the correlation between quality of sustainability system and the fact of usage of such technology is identified. Moreover, five the most valuable factors send us to the previous discussion, confirming the importance of transparency in data and supportive information, quality of intermediaries and involvements of all sides of society (Olawumi & Chan, 2019).



Table 5. Top-5 factors for implementing building information modeling and sustainability practices in construction projects (Olawumi & Chan, 2019).

The research about sustainability for higher education system of Malaysia also brings us to some previous conclusions. The following critical success factors has been developed in this case: knowledge, education, awareness, training, and organizational structure. Indeed, we have already been discussing the importance of business-model (and the structure of organization is, undoubtedly, the part of this definition), knowledge sharing and awareness. However, training is the sphere that has never been discussed before in sufficient way. Indeed, training may be considered as a part of professional education, and training possibilities placed in particular company for its employees may play a significant role in contribution to sustainable practices development (Salleh et. al., 2020).

It is also important to mention that the research reminds us about the significance of considering education itself as a substantial factor in context of sustainability.

Some interesting insights were given to us by the research of Ifeyinwa Juliet Orji, Simonov Kusi-Sarpong and Himanshu Gupta in the sphere of freight logistics. The researches state there is a significant influence of social media usage on the rate of company's sustainability (Ifeyinwa et. al., 2020).

This insight opens one more significant conversation. Indeed, social media nowadays is one of the most important communication channels of companies and their customers. Social media marketing techniques allow companies to change the perception of their brands in eyes of regular consumers. Going deeper, that is the possibility for businesses to deliver to society the information about sustainability practices these firms implement to their processes. Moreover, the number of such possibilities is extremely limited. What are other alternatives to show all customers this or that product deserves buying it from the ethical point of view? Answering this question definitely meets difficulties.



2.Interim results of the research: conclusions basing on the literature review

2.1 Main sustainability problems of international apparel companies

According to the literature review made before, the following problems of sustainability establishment in the apparel industry may be distinguished:

1. Price problem

Consumers are sensitive to price factor, and at the same time it is difficult for apparel companies to produce sustainable items due to obstacles with investigation and development of eco-friendly materials.

2. Lack of awareness and personal responsibility

There is a low level of awareness and personal responsibility among industry influencers. Moreover, the number of such influencers is huge, variative (CEOs, designers, social media, etc.) and difficult to manage.

3. The confusion of the value chain

The value chain in apparel industry is long and consists of many organizations. It is hard for one company to control its whole value chain on the subject of sustainable contractors. In addition, the difficulty of the value chain leads to lack of transparency for consumer.

4. Disbalance of attention

It was found that most companies devote too little attention to the social side of sustainability Triple Bottom-Line Approach, focusing more on environmental issues.

5. “Fast fashion”

The societal trend for “fast fashion” worsens other sustainability problems, involving the companies into the fashion race with the dramatic increase of resource waste.



2.2 Success factors of apparel companies' sustainability: theoretical model

Basing on the literature review, the following model of success factors has been developed.

The central element of the model is the rate of societal perception of company's sustainability. There are two groups of factors that influence on this indicator. The first group are factors of publicity that represent the overall image of company in the eyes of society. Another group of factors are things that influence directly on sustainability of the company. The rate of company's sustainability, at the same time, theoretically influence the central indicator of the model.

The sub-model of sustainability factors consists of two levels: level of external and level of internal factors. Internal factors are united into segments for making the sub-model more structural.

It is important to split up the definitions of sustainability rate and societal perception of sustainability. The former indicator is the rate we are concentrated on. The latter indicator contains the former one and all factors of company's overall branding, image, etc. The problem is that there is no `pure' indicator of company's sustainability. The rate of perception makes it possible for us to conduct an analytical model that at least partly contain `pure' sustainability output and all success factors related to it. In further research we will use the whole mentioned model to make the calculations, but only the sub-model of sustainability rate will be considered in the results' interpretation.

For this model, the author tried to capture all theoretically possible factors of influence, basing on the studied literature on the topic.



2.3 Success factors of apparel companies' sustainability: practically adopted model

The previous model has to be remade for continuation of the research. It becomes obvious that one particular company has no possibility to significantly influence the external factors. Our goal is to develop a practical model that can possibly be used by apparel companies for changing the situation with their personal sustainability rate. Thus, all external factors are excluded from the future consideration in this paper.



3.Testing of the research model

3.1 Methodology

Our current task is to make the specified model analysis. Namely, each success factor should be checked on correlation with the output - the degree of company's sustainability. Moreover, all factors should be united in one group to build a regression model to check how factors interrelate with each other and by this influence on the overall impact. Unfortunately, an unequivocal and definite indicator for the measurement of companies' sustainability rate has not been developed by now in scientific society. To make the research possible, the decision has been made to shape two groups of companies divided by the criteria of sustainability rate. A company could be referred to `sustainable' group by three reasons (it is enough to be suitable to only one condition):

1. The company's name is mentioned in multiple thematic social media portals as sustainable brand, and this happens with relatively high frequency.

2. The company takes the position in first twenty percent of numeral rating (we want to be sure companies in opposite groups have significantly different rates of sustainability).

3. The company is short-listed in the rating without positions.

The basis for adding the company to the opposite group is as follows:

1. There are no mentions of the company's sustainability in social media or in rating's `sustainable short-list'.

2. The company is placed in the last fifty percent part of the numeral rating.

Wherein, the second reason is preferable. The first point is used only in terms to expand the number of companies involved into the research to make it statistically correct.

To shape two groups of companies, the following resources have been used:

* The article on “Forbes” informing about `eleven companies leading the way in sustainability' (Forbes, 2020);

* The article on “GH” where the list of best (according to the authors) sustainable fashion brands have been published. This list possesses twenty-one positions (goodhousekeeping.com, 2020);

* The list of ten sustainable clothing companies from Arcadia Blog (Arcadia, 2020);

* The list “Our favorite sustainable brands” from the women fashion journal “Harper's Bazaar” (Harper's Bazaar, 2020);

* The group of companies nominated for Dow Jones Sustainability Index in 2019 (rating with places and points) (Robecosam, 2019);

* The rating of companies in Corporate Social Responsibility conducted by CSR-Hub (rating that has short-list of the most sustainable companies) (csrhub.com, 2020).

The main principles of choosing the sources for companies' selection were the following:

1. The main criterion of usage any source was the data availability. However, ratings and journals also needed to be recognized by the society and expert community in sustainability sphere. Ratings of CSR-Hub and Dow Jones both had open-sourced data about companies. At the same time, these ratings are internationally recognized and certified by influencing organizations in sphere of sustainability. In detail, CSR-Hub has certifications from B-corporation, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and CDP, and the relevance of Dow Jones Sustainability Index was evaluated by a number of research papers (Hope & Fowler, 2007; Lee & Faff, 2009; Chatterji et. al., 2016; Carlos & Lewis, 2017).

2. There was the purpose to cover all kinds of sources that can possibly influence the societal opinion to avoid the mistake of biased data. Therefore, the expert opinion has been represented by rating lists; Forbes magazine is one of the most prestigious social media about business-world that takes many awards from social media systems of multiple number of countries (forbes.ru, 2020);

Harper's Bazaar is considered as one of the most influencing journals in fashion industry (thebalancecareers.com, 2019);

GH is a popular source among housekeepers, and shopping can also be considered as the part of housekeeping; moreover, this portal has a convincing methodology of product testing (goodhousekeeping.com, 2020);

Arcadia is the company-producer of renewable energy with persuasive portfolio, and the opinion of professionals in sustainability sphere may be important to take into account (Arcadia, 2020).

The final list of companies involved into the research and the more detailed procedure of companies' selection description is placed in Appendix A and Appendix B respectively.

Sustainability rate is not the only variable that causes obstacles in evaluation. Some factors of the specified model will not be included in the analysis due to impossibility of measurement or appropriate data unavailability. The final list of factors included into the research consists of the following items:

* Company's size;

* Customer satisfaction;

* Quality of SMM;

* Informational transparency;

* Sharing or renting economy models' implementation;

Moreover, some other factors will be added to the research. These factors were not discussed broadly in the literature. However, they have been mentioned in a number of research papers, and, in author's opinion, they may logically influence the sustainability output of apparel companies. The list of such factors with the influential logic is placed below:

* Company's geographical features (the location of headquarters and other company's branches may define the cost of labor and the cost of materials; what is more, the location of the main office may somehow influence how company deals with sustainability issues, because there are some differences in cultures and intellectual capacities of different counties) (Holtstrцm et. al., 2019).

* Number of stakeholders (hypothetically, the more stakeholders in percentage evaluation the company has, the more power they have and more responsibility the company takes for any move it makes; there is a number of researches proven that sustainable practices may increase shareholders' wealth, and plethora of them start to know about that) (Gуmez-Bezares et. al., 2016).

Table 6 represents the indicators developed for each factor included in the research. The third column contains units for measurement of each variable, the fourth column captures the type of variable.

Table 6. Description of indicators for success factors.

Thus, the following indicators will be measured and afterwards analyzed on existence of significant correlation with the contribution to the first or the second group of companies.

It can be noticed that some of factors are evaluated by using quality indicators, so they demand further explanation.

Specification of information about contractors stands for checking if the company provides to customers detailed information about factories and other organizations involved in production processes of the company. The official website of the company is supposed to be the source of this data. The following system is applied for this criterion' evaluation:

* The company receives 2 points, if it provides detailed information about its contractors: name, type of contractor, country, city, address (as a maximum), contact information (as a maximum).

* The company receives 1 point, if the information about contractors is sufficiently limited: there are only some mentions of contractors, there are no details about companies' partners, the locations of operations are not shown, the information set is not well-structured, there is no special website section to look at, etc.

* The company receives 0 points, if there is almost nothing mentioned about contractors.

The variable is integer, that is the intermediate results between 0 and 1, or 1 and 2 points are not allowed.

Specification of sustainability information on company's website is about the degree of the company's openness in telling the customers as much information and statistics as possible about its sustainability practices. Below the evaluation scale may be taken into consideration:

* The company is marked with the letter A if it has exemplary well-structured and detailed website block about sustainable development inside the company. The number of things are taken into account: the amount of content, its variability, the structure, the facility to find all interested kind of content, the presence of statistics and numbers, the availability of sustainability report as a separate document, etc.

* The company receives the letter B, if its website page about sustainability exists, but not detailed enough according to the items mentioned in the previous bullet point.

* Finally, the company has C as a value, if there is no separate section about sustainability.

The presence of the information about contractors is excluded from the evaluation process in order to avoid possible statistical mistakes in future regression model.

The evaluation system of this variable is relative, that is the value received by one company's website may be influenced by its comparison with another website.

The existence of information about sharing or renting economy initiatives on the official website represents us if the company makes an effort to rebuild its business-model in more sustainable way (Holtstrцm, 2019).

The variable's type is binary, so there are two possible alternatives for companies to be evaluated:

* Value 1 would mean the company has some information about implementation of sharing or renting economy practices. For instance, the company's website may contain the data about partnerships with companies collecting and distributing clothes for those who need them. Otherwise, there could be the direct message on the website about usage of sharing economy model.

* Value 0 stands for the opposite situation: the confirmation of using of sharing or renting economy practices by the company is not found.

Quality of social networking and site maintenance is the most difficult variable among all quality indicators. The indicator shows how well the companies make effort in maintaining their brands in social nets. The value represents the sum of other value received for existence and quality of two pages in social nets (Facebook, Instagram) and the website. The mentioned social nets have been chosen by the following reasons:

1. Facebook is the most popular international social net, so it must be important for international apparel companies to lead pages in it.

2. Instagram is affiliated with Facebook. Moreover, marketing and advertising systems in the apparel industry are certainly focused on the visual perception of consumers, so using colorful pictures and videos for advertising seems as one of the most effective methods. Instagram is exactly the social net where page owners are specialized in posting videos and pictures.

The maximum number of points available for the company in this criterion is 7,5. All social nets and the website have equal values in 2,5 points. Below the breakdown of these values for each internet resource is represented.

* 0,5/2,5 points were given just for existence of the website or page in any social net.

* 1/2,5 points could be given as maximum for page in any social net for its content and design.

* 1/2,5 points could be given as maximum for page in any social net for the definite frequency of posts.

* 2/2,5 points could be given as maximum for website for its content and design.

The following table claims compliance between certain frequency of posting in social nets and the appropriate value in points.

Table 7. Evaluation table of posting frequency on companies' pages in social nets.

The represented table was conducted by author in discussion with professional social media marketers. The frequency of posting per month is counted as an average number of posts for last three full months (namely April, March, February 2020).

The procedure of evaluation has been done by three experts in SMM after preliminary discussion of such procedure. The values of experts for each company were united as a weighted average value. Two of these experts had the real practice in projects of apparel companies. Thus, the weights of these two experts were established equal to 0,4, and the last expert has the weight of 0,2.

It is important to notice that there is no overlay between evaluation of website inside the criterion of SMM and assessment of website's sustainability section. In the former case, we consider the overall perception of the company's brand. That means we concentrate on the content variability, the website simplicity for users, the attractiveness of the design, etc., abstracting from the research focus. In the latter situation, there is a full concentration on all things regarding sustainability.

The dataset with values of all variables can be found in Appendix C, and the results of companies' SMM evaluation are placed in Appendix D.

All the values for mentioned quality indicators have been received by manual screening and analysis of companies' websites (or social nets pages). Free internet sourced databases have been used to check information about the companies or to add it in case it is not revealed on the official platforms of companies. The names of these sources are `marketscreener.com' and `owler.com'.

According to the evolved variables, the following hypothesis were developed: H1: Big apparel companies are more likely to be sustainable.

H2: Companies' movements towards sharing or renting economy models positively influence their sustainability rate.

H3: There is a certain relation between sustainability rate of the company and the geographical location of its headquarters.

H4: More the share of stakeholders in the company, closer this firm to ideals of sustainability.

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