O'Neill
Surfers who live and breathe sustainability
With Renske Lambert, Global Ocean Mission Manager
O'Neill uses Worldfavor Sustainable Sourcing and Supply Chain Visibility to track their far-reaching supply chain, stay on top of human rights due diligence, and analyze risk and performance in social and environmental areas.
Industry
Surf & Ski sportswear and accessories
Company
O’Neill makes performance sportswear for active and adventurous consumers. The products protect people from the elements and enhance their performance. Today, the brand is loved by surfers and skiers internationally, leading the lifestyle sportswear markets in the US, Europe and Japan.
Country
United States (Worldfavor is used by O’Neill Europe)
Visit
104
Factories
11
Countries
3
users in worldfavor
About
Sustainability at O'Neill
The O’Neill brand started in 1952 when founder Jack O’Neill began designing and producing the world’s first neoprene wetsuits– from a humble garage off the Great Highway in San Francisco.
Jack O’Neill firmly believed that ‘the ocean is alive, and we’ve got to take care of it.’ This creed is embodied in O’Neill’s sustainability strategy: the Ocean Mission, which shines through in how the company operates. O’Neill makes responsible choices in its production throughout its value chain and pays close attention to the materials and methods used.
O’Neill is mindful of the social and environmental impact of its products and strives to improve working conditions in its factories and in every stage of the supply and production process.
Sustainability scope & challenges
More than audits and due diligence
O’Neill’s products are manufactured in supplier factories in various countries. To stay on top of the current situation in each country, the company uses independent specialists conduct audits.
When O’Neill migrated its entire software package to a more efficient platform in 2021, the company also took the opportunity to modernize and expand its CSR platform. This allowed O’Neill to centralize and automate its essential CSR activities. The new solution needed to be able to also handle additional information in the supply chain.
Some examples of additional information that O’Neill requests from suppliers: Are workers allowed to unionize? Is there an effective complaints process in place? Does the supplier pay its employees a living wage, and if so, how much?
Another requirement for the new system was supply chain due diligence, which new legislation under the European Green Deal will require. It addresses sticking points in sustainable planning to protect human rights and reduce environmental harm from business decisions.
When the old system was retired, all of the data points had to be collected and processed by hand. It was an extremely time-consuming process, which uncovered the need for an automated and integrated system.
"Worldfavor provides us with a major expansion of our due diligence activities. With Worldfavor’s support, we can expect better and broader insights into our risk analysis, in both the social and environmental spheres. It lets us map out more detailed points for improvement for our suppliers – and that helps us make a difference!"
Renske Lambert, Global Ocean Mission Manager
Solutions
Partnership is the foundation of sustainability management
O’Neill is currently using Worldfavor Sustainable Sourcing and the Supply Chain Visibility solution. In addition, The company also plans to start using the Sustainability Management solution in the future.
Sustainable Sourcing tracks information in factories
Sustainable Sourcing keeps track of all the information on the different factories and suppliers: from addresses to numbers of works and additional supplier questionnaires. The focus lies on O’Neill’s social and environmental compliance – and also serves as an automated communications channel for all partners.
O’Neill started using Worldfavor in the summer of 2021. Since then, it has charted out 523 products and brought 104 factories under Sustainable Sourcing. At this time, three users are operating in the Worldfavor system.
Supply Chain Visibility maps all product stock
Twice a year the complete O’Neill product line is loaded into Worldfavor Supply Chain Visibility. This process takes stock of all tier-1 and tier-2 actors for each product. ‘Product mapping’ lets you track a product over its entire supply route.
"Worldfavor is part of the commitment we made when we signed the Transparency Pledge. By centralizing and automating all the required due diligence data points, we can create more efficient action plans."
Renske Lambert, Global Ocean Mission Manager
Results
Enhanced sustainability and real workplace improvements
The handy dashboard gives a clear overview of all the information collected in Worldfavor Sustainable Sourcing and Supply Chain Visibility. All critical items are highlighted in the platform, such as if an audit or certificate is about to expire for a particular factory, or a specific response from a factory is flagged as posing a risk.
Worldfavor provides O'Neill with a major expansion of its due diligence activities, improving its corporate social responsibility. The company's risk and performance analysis – in both social and environmental areas – has seen continuous expansion with Worldfavor’s support. Mutual trust and partnership are crucial to making workplace improvements and Worldfavor solutions and questionnaires allow O’Neill to centralize data from and for the factories, to streamline communication.
Going forward
Next step: Sustainability Management
O’Neill currently enjoys full visibility over all direct tier-1 suppliers, and a direct connection with 70% of tier-2 suppliers. Going forward, the company will continue to use Worldfavor to collect relevant data points, aiming for full visibility over all tier-1 and tier-2 suppliers by 2025.
O’Neill’s next step is to expand with Worldfavor Sustainability Management – to also map out all internal processes for a holistic overview of the sustainability of the entire operation.
Worldfavor solutions used by O'Neill
Sustainable Sourcing
Worldfavor's Sustainable Sourcing solution empowers companies to build sustainable supply chains, minimize risk, and become resilient. Sustainable Sourcing automates data collection, aggregation, and management of supplier data. This helps analyze information and mitigate risk, communicate expectations, and transform supply chain across all tiers.
Supply Chain Visibility
The Supply Chain Visibility solution enables organizations to map every tier of their supply chain through crowd-sourced data and get to the root of their impact, gain visibility and keep stakeholders informed. The solution allows the user to visualize their impact by product or category, and uncover hidden risks in multi-tier supply chains.
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