Forecasting, forecasting, forecasting.
That’s what fashion brands need to double down on if they’re hoping to shore up the responsible business practices that embattled manufacturers need to keep production rolling in the face of unprecedented economic and geopolitical upheaval, according to the most recent edition of the Better Buying Purchasing Practices Index, or BBPPI.
Nearly 1,360 suppliers worldwide participated in the current cycle, scoring 35 brands that included Better Buying subscribers like American Eagle Outfitters, Eileen Fisher, Lululemon and Nike, along with non-subscribers such as Fanatics, Patagonia, Target and Zara owner Inditex.
While the analysis exhibits less of the “acute crisis” of mass order cancellations and non-payment for orders that was pervasive in the early days of the pandemic, said Katie Hess, head of product at Better Buying at Cascale, its middling performance is still indicative of broader issues that undermine supply chain resilience through a lack of engagement, transparency and accountability.
“Today, the issues are more structural and chronic: weaker forecasting, price pressures and unstable sourcing volumes,” she said of the report, the first since the multi-stakeholder organization formerly known as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition acquired the Better Buying platform earlier this year. “The shift is from crisis mode to chronic underperformance, and progress on purchasing practices remains slow overall.”
To put it another way, the latest BBPPI may suggest that the worst of the disruptions seen during Covid-19 has receded, but the industry is far from “out of the woods” in terms of the power imbalance and supplier vulnerability that the period exposed in a spectacular manner, Hess said.
The stress test of the past year hasn’t helped: Suppliers who were surveyed between April 1 and June 5—a period marked by the sudden and whipsawing imposition of bruising tariffs, first on Canada, Mexico and China, then on the rest of the world—reported sub‑optimal purchasing practices, especially around forecasting, pricing, payment and sourcing stability.
Planning and forecasting, in particular, saw the biggest decline in category score, the report found, falling by three points compared with others that saw more marginal decreases from the previous year. Some 37 percent of the suppliers polled rated this as the No. 1 priority area for improvement, or more than double the proportion for the next-highest category, cost and cost negotiation.
That manufacturers continue to cite this practice as the most critical makes sense, Hess said. Improvements in forecasting can have a positive knock-on effect elsewhere, say by easing cost and cost negotiation pressures or streamlining sourcing and order placement through earlier engagement and clearer timelines.
On the flip side, without reliable planning and forecasts, suppliers risk not right-sizing their workforce or materials, leaving them with too much to spare or worse, scrambling to cover what they need, resulting in production delays, quality issues, diminished operational efficiency and increased costs. Discrepancies between forecasts and actual order volumes could force them to resort to subcontracting or put employees on furlough, both of which can harm worker well-being.
“We say this every year, but buyers continue to fall short,” she said. “Get forecasting right, and you embed stability in supplier partnerships, which will create a foundation and buffer when market volatility hits. In parallel, buyers should commit to formalizing long-term partnerships with suppliers, so that when crises hit, the foundations are already in place to tackle challenges together.”
In total, the soft goods industry scored 66 out of a possible 100, or one point lower than 2024’s benchmark. Sourcing and order placement was the only category to demonstrate improvement, albeit from what the BBPI described as a “low base” that continues to put it at the bottom-most rung. Even the management of the purchasing process, a category that historically maintained the highest score, took a tumble.
Taken together, the analysis said, the results reveal a year that was marked more by “setbacks and emerging risks” than by advancement, with buyers needing to “prioritize targeted action” to counter the downward trend by repairing any shattered supplier trust that might have been regarded as part of the collateral damage.
That buyer practices have been described as inconsistent, whether the supplier is in East and South Asia, China or the Americas, is also a sign that companies need to take a “more consistent, systems-based” approach to embed not only fair working relationships throughout their supply chains but also predictable ones that don’t keep manufacturers guessing, the report said.
“But just as we saw during Covid, companies that have subscribed to Better Buying year over year and maintained strong, long-term relationships with their suppliers consistently performed better, and their suppliers were better able to absorb unexpected shocks,” Hess said. “That’s why it’s so critical to scale up buyer engagement with the Better Buying surveys, if we want to accelerate progress rather than just measure it.”
The fact is that responsible purchasing “isn’t only about good intentions,” she said. Fair lead times, predictable payment terms and coordinated communications contribute to measurable, sustained performance that directly influences supplier outcomes. Hess said that in a world where chaos and disruption have become the default, manufacturers will only be protected when buyers make the switch from playing crisis whack-a-mole to deploying responsible purchasing practices as the standard procedure.
“We don’t know what the geopolitical situation will look like next year—tariffs could shift again, placing suppliers at heightened risk,” she said. “Nor can we predict which sourcing regions will be affected or to what extent. The big takeaway is that brands need to accept global volatility as the new normal and commit to embedding resilient practices across the whole supply chain, learning from higher-performing regions and supporting suppliers in regions facing persistent challenges to foster more balanced, sustainable supply chains.”