Ted Baker joined MADE-BY in May 2010. While Ted Baker started life as a shirt specialist back in 1988, these days he has much more to offer. The secret to his success is less a well-guarded formula and more an unwavering belief in the best quality, outstanding attention-to-detail and a rather quirky British sense of humour. Put it all together and it’s easy to see why Ted Baker is No Ordinary Designer Label.

Social Conditions in Factories
In 2010, 36% of Ted’s production was made in low risk/socially certified/compliant factories, of which 29% was rated Class A. MADE-BY held two workshops on: social compliance and a CSR strategy in September 2010. Following these workshop, four potential social improvement projects were identified; three in Guangzhou, China and one in Turkey. Representatives from Solidaridad MADE-BY’s partner organisation visited two factories to conduct further gap analyses in December. All the social improvement projects are ongoing in 2011. Ted is expecting this will lead to significant improvements in their 2011 Social Scorecard.

Environmental Impact of Raw Materials
Ted Baker has historically sourced only a small amount of organic and sustainable fibres for their collections. This is reflected in their Scorecard for 2010, with only 2% being made of sustainable fibres. However, in July 2010, a MADE-BY fabric workshop was held to raise awareness on sustainable fibres and identify an action plan to move forward on their sustainable fabrics. Due to the timings of these workshops Ted is targeting to have more sustainable items in the collection by Autumn/Winter 2011. Ted’s designers now have targets for the quantity of sustainable pieces in their range planning. Production Co-ordinators are now aware of sustainable fibres and understand the certificates they need to ask for. Ted have also been running ‘Green Product Knowledge’ training sessions with Ted’s retail teams.