The 13th Asian Textile Conference was held in Hyderabad on April 2 to 3, convened by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry and the Government of Telangana.
Key Takeaways
At the 13th Asian Textile Conference (ATEXCON 2026) in Hyderabad, India, leaders from across the global textile value chain came together to explore how the industry can move from ambition to measurable progress. Convened by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry and the Government of Telangana, the event focused on “Reimagining the Future of Global Textiles,” offering a clear emphasis on collaboration, innovation, and practical execution.
Cascale’s Prasanth Nandakumar, stakeholder engagement manager
for APAC, contributed to a panel titled: “Advancing Circularity Through Shared Responsibility,” examining whether circularity is a vision, obligation, or business opportunity. The discussion reinforced a critical shift: circularity must move beyond pilot projects to scalable, commercially viable models.
Anjali Krishnan, director of cotton, circularity and decarbonization at IDH moderated the conversation which also brought together industry perspectives from Sundar Senthilnathan of H&M Group, Prasad Pant of Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC), Vijaya Krishnappa of Kosha, N. Thirukkumaran of the Tiruppur Exporters’ Association, Girish of Sulochana, and Astha Kubele of Fashion For Good.
During the session, Nandakumar highlighted how the Higg Index tools support standardized measurement and benchmarking, helping organizations translate circularity goals into facility-level improvements. He also emphasized the role of policy alignment, referencing Cascale’s APAC Policy Priorities as a pathway to more enabling regulatory frameworks.
Across sessions, a consistent message emerged: the industry is entering a new phase shaped by both pressure and opportunity.
Participants pointed to several structural shifts. These included ongoing trade uncertainty, geopolitical dynamics, and margin pressures which are challenging traditional sourcing and production models. Global supply chains are becoming more diversified and resilient, with increased focus on speed, flexibility, and regional strategies. At the same time, transparency is becoming a baseline expectation. Growing regulatory requirements, particularly in the EU, are accelerating demand for traceability, verified data, and lower-impact production.
Noted during the session, technology is also redefining competitiveness. Speakers acknowledged a shift from cost-led models to speed, intelligence, and adaptability, driven by AI, automation, real-time data collection, and digital integration across manufacturing.
Despite structural gaps, there is progress being made. India’s strong performance in pre-consumer recycling highlights what is possible at scale, but post-consumer waste continues to present a significant challenge. This reinforces the need for coordinated action across the value chain, supported by credible data and aligned standards. India is positioning itself for significant growth in the textile sector by 2030, with a focus on man-made fibers, technical textiles, and value-added production. And regional hubs like Telangana are playing an important role in advancing manufacturing capabilities and innovation.
ATEXCON 2026 reflected a broader industry shift that Cascale is monitoring closely. The focus is moving from conversation to coordinated action, grounded in data, enabled by technology, and supported by regional partnerships and insights.
In this guest blog, Jayanth Kashyap, investment lead at Good Fashion Fund, outlines the industry’s structural gaps and how Cascale’s “Source of Good” podcast dives deeper.
Key Takeaways
The conversations that stay with me aren’t the ones about ambition. They’re the ones about friction. A small-to-medium-sized textile mill owner in Bangladesh who can’t access a long-term loan because their balance sheet doesn’t fit a bank’s credit model. A brand sustainability team that has committed to Scope 3 targets but can’t finance the transition for their Tier 2 suppliers. A policymaker designing carbon incentives without a clear picture of what manufacturers can absorb.
These aren’t isolated problems. They are symptoms of the same structural gap: capital, data, policy, and production are moving on separate tracks, at different speeds, with different incentives.
That’s the problem “Source of Good” takes seriously. It’s why I was glad to be part of the conversation in Season 3, and why I am excited to dive into Season 4, which launched this week. Good Fashion Fund works at this intersection, moving affordable capital to SME manufacturers in South and Southeast Asia who are ready to decarbonize but locked out of conventional finance and locked into high carbon assets. What we have found is that the technical and financial solutions largely exist. The harder problem is alignment, and brands have a real role to play here, not just as buyers setting sustainability requirements, but as co-investors in the transition. When brands, capital providers, and manufacturers are pulling in the same direction, individual deals stop being one-offs and start becoming a scalable model.
“Source of Good” doesn’t treat these as parallel conversations. And that’s because the link between supply chain due diligence, procurement decisions, and investment flows isn’t incidental. It’s structural, and none of it holds if workers aren’t part of the conversation. Inclusive progress isn’t a downstream outcome but a condition for the transition to be durable at all. Ultimately, this won’t be driven by any single actor getting it right. It will happen when enough actors stop optimizing in isolation.
The Hong Kong event convened 130 senior executives from across the consumer goods industry highlighting shared supply chain risk and unmet manufacturer solutions.
Key Takeaways
Cascale recently contributed to Schneider Electric Perspectives Day Asia in Hong Kong, convening 150 senior executives from across the consumer goods industry. The event brought together leaders in sustainability, finance, energy, and supply chain to explore practical pathways to net-zero.
Nicole Lee-Kauer, manager of Cascale’s Manufacturer Climate Action Program (MCAP), joined a breakout panel called “Advancing Supply Chain Decarbonization: Leveraging Data, System Interoperability, and Regulatory Compliance,” injecting learnings from the Manufacturer Climate Action Program (MCAP), now in its fifth cohort.
The 18-month program is a pivotal initiative that unifies global manufacturers to combat climate change across the consumer goods industry, driving sustainable change through science-aligned targets (SATs). Engaging over 85 manufacturers to date, the program is open to all manufacturers looking to accelerate the adoption of science-aligned GHG reduction targets within their Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Manufacturers and brands can register for the informational webinar April 21 (register now).
Across the event, a clear theme was present: accountability. Organizations are increasingly integrating climate risk into enterprise-wide risk management, rather than treating it as a standalone sustainability topic. Companies such as Philippines‑based conglomerate Ayala and hotel chain Marriott are embedding climate considerations into governance structures, linking performance to executive decision-making and incentives. This reflects growing alignment between sustainability and financial accountability.
Discussions with brands and retailers, including Japanese beverage retailer Asahi, Henderson Land, and Hong Kong Land reinforced that manufacturers face similar decarbonization challenges across sectors. These shared barriers point to the importance of collective action, aligned tools, and consistent data to drive progress at scale.
A separate session offered insights from FairPrice Group’s supplier decarbonization program. There was strong alignment with Cascale’s MCAP, particularly in terms of the program’s approach to target-setting and capacity building. For example, FairPrice’s use of a supplier segmentation model and structured training offers a practical example of how brands can engage manufacturers more effectively.
At the same time, their experience underscores the role of enabling environments. Public funding, supportive policy frameworks, and cross-border partnerships are key accelerators for supplier decarbonization. These learnings present opportunities to further strengthen MCAP, including the potential development of a simple self-assessment tool to help manufacturers evaluate readiness for programs like MCAP or science-based targets.
In all, events like Perspectives Day Asia reinforce Cascale’s role not only as a convener, bringing diverse perspectives in consumer goods, but also as a contributor to cross-industry dialogue.
For years, industry focus was on cost, speed, and efficiency. That hasn’t gone away, but it’s no longer enough.
Key Takeaways
There’s a noticeable shift happening in how global supply chains are being assessed.
For years, the focus was largely on cost, speed, and efficiency. That hasn’t gone away, but it’s no longer enough. Increasingly, companies are being asked to show not just what they produce, but how they produce it. Environmental impact, working conditions, traceability, and the credibility of underlying data are all moving into the spotlight.
Show, don’t tell. That’s the insistence behind the latest investigatory probes.
You can see this shift playing out across multiple fronts. Trade enforcement measures are starting to look more closely at how manufacturing systems operate today and what factors fueled their current scale. At the same time, sustainability regulations, due diligence requirements, and product-level transparency initiatives are expanding in parallel, particularly in key markets like the EU and Asia — reinforcing expectations on companies to demonstrate credible, comparable data across their value chains. These are not isolated developments. Together, they point to a clear direction of travel: supply chains are becoming more accountable, and expectations are rising.
For businesses, this changes the operating model.
Access to markets is increasingly tied to the ability to demonstrate credible performance. It’s no longer just about meeting internal targets or publishing a report. Companies need to be able to show consistent, comparable, and verifiable data across complex global value chains. That is a much higher bar.
But while government expectations are becoming clearer, the way the industry is responding is not. Most companies are still navigating a fragmented landscape. Different frameworks, different methodologies, different reporting requests, often asking for similar information in slightly different ways. For suppliers, this can mean managing multiple audits, duplicative data submissions, and competing requirements from different customers.
This is where the real risk – and opportunity – sits. According to Better Buying’s 2025 Win-Win Sustainable Partnerships report, 67.9 percent of suppliers reported cost savings of $5,000 or more by using a common framework such as the Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP)’s Convergence Assessment Framework (CAF). The CAF underpins Cascale’s Higg Facility Social & Labor Module (Higg FSLM).
Without undue burden of duplicate audits, suppliers put this money towards workplace investments, worker programs, new technology, community support, environmental certifications, higher wages, and improved financial outlook. It’s easy to assume that regulation is the main challenge. In reality, the bigger issue is how fragmented industry responses are making it harder to meet those growing expectations. Misaligned frameworks are now a cost driver. They increase the burden on suppliers, create inefficiencies across value chains, and make it harder to generate insights that are actually useful for decision-making.
You end up with more data, but not necessarily better data. And at a time when policy expectations are increasing, that’s a problem.
If companies are going to meet rising expectations from governments, regulators, investors, and consumers alike, alignment needs to move higher up the agenda. Not as a nice-to-have, but as a practical way to reduce complexity and improve outcomes.
The data speaks for itself. Aligned approaches to measurement and reporting can help cut through duplication. They create a shared understanding of performance, improve comparability, and make it easier to translate regulatory requirements into operational reality. They also support more efficient collaboration between brands and manufacturers, which is where much of the real work happens.
This is where industry collaboration becomes critical.
No single company can solve fragmentation on its own. The scale and complexity of global supply chains mean that progress depends on shared approaches and common reference points. When companies align around consistent methodologies and shared frameworks, it reduces friction and allows effort to be focused where it matters most: improving performance.
That’s the opportunity that appeals to everyone from chief sustainability and procurement officers to chief financial officers.
The direction of travel is clear. Supply chain accountability is increasing, and it will continue to do so. The question now is whether the systems supporting it evolve at the same pace.
Cascale brings real-world insight to sports-product management students on aligning sourcing strategies with climate action and decent work.
Cascale brings real-world insight to sports-product management students on aligning sourcing strategies with climate action and decent work.
This week, Cascale’s Joleen Ong, senior director, brand and retailer membership, joined the University of Oregon Sports Product Management (SPM) graduate program to explore how sustainability is operationalized across global supply chains — and why sourcing and costing decisions matter for both climate and decent work outcomes.
Ong was a guest lecturer at the sourcing and costing strategies course led by instructor Eric Goldner, where 48 graduate students explored the intersection of purchasing practices, environmental performance, and the impacts of tariffs. Goldner is a seasoned supply chain executive with over 25 years of experience at major brands including Nike, Coach, and Columbia Sportswear, while Ong worked in the outdoor and sporting goods industry – first at Columbia Sportswear, then Fanatics – before joining and leading Cascale’s brand and retailer membership. She gave a compelling lecture on the sourcing challenges faced by sustainability professionals.
A Deeper Dive on Sourcing Challenges
Following an overview of recent U.S. tariff developments, Ong’s session explored Cascale’s role in convening brands, manufacturers, and stakeholders to align on credible tools and shared standards. She also uncovered real-world sourcing and costing case examples from industry experience at Columbia Sportswear and Fanatics. Using a factory audit walkthrough, Ong highlighted how common social and environmental violations are often symptoms of poor purchasing and planning decisions. Finally, she touched on the role of responsible purchasing and Better Buying approaches in addressing root causes and strengthening decent work across supply chains.
Throughout the session, students demonstrated strong engagement and thoughtful questions about how collective action can move the industry from compliance to measurable impact.
Importance to Industry
The University of Oregon Sports Product Management Program was co-founded by former Nike leader Ellen Schmidt-Devlin and prepares talent for the sports and outdoor industry. The specialized, industry-partnered program teaches the full product creation lifecycle, supported by advisory board participation from brands, manufacturers, and organizations such as Cascale, where Ong has served as an advisory board member since 2024.The curriculum emphasizes hands-on learning through its Portland-based innovation lab, located in a city widely recognized as a global hub for the footwear and athletic apparel industry, often referred to as the “sneaker capital of America.” Approximately 90 percent of alumni work within the industry.
Engaging with academia helps connect Cascale’s work to the next generation of sourcing, product, and sustainability leaders. It also reinforces a key message: decisions made upstream – across areas like planning, costing, and purchasing – directly shape environmental performance, worker outcomes, and long-term business resilience.
Several students expressed interest in future internship opportunities, signaling strong alignment between emerging talent and the industry’s growing focus on credible, collective sustainability solutions.
The lecture follows a series of Cascale student engagements including speaking opportunities at Parsons, the Ohio State University (via the Educators for Socially-Responsible Apparel Practices (ESRAP)), and more this quarter.
Resilience narratives that focus on individual preparedness are short-sighted. A system built on cooperation is necessary for sustainable supply chains.
Resilience narratives that focus on individual preparedness are short-sighted. A system built on cooperation is necessary for sustainable supply chains.
Each year, the Global Risks Report offers a snapshot of how leaders around the world see the near and long-term risk landscape evolving. The 2026 edition, published by the World Economic Forum, is not a radical departure from previous years. Climate change remains a defining risk. Economic pressure, geopolitical fragmentation, and social stress continue to intensify. What feels different this year is not the diagnosis, but the clarity of the signal.
The risks shaping the global economy are increasingly interconnected, mutually reinforcing, and deeply embedded in the systems that underpin consumer goods supply chains. For our industry, this is no longer a future-facing warning. It is a description of current operating conditions.
The report highlights how environmental, economic, and geopolitical risks are converging rather than occurring in isolation. For consumer goods companies, this convergence is most visible in manufacturing regions, where climate exposure, regulatory change, cost volatility, and labor pressures are felt at the same time, often by the same actors.
Suppliers today are navigating rising energy costs while being asked to decarbonize, manage water scarcity, comply with new due diligence legislation, and respond to shifting demand patterns. These pressures are not sequential. They are simultaneous. When viewed through that lens, the risks described in the Global Risks Report – like geoeconomics confrontation, state-based conflict, and extreme weather – are not abstract global forces. They are practical constraints shaping day-to-day decisions across value chains.
This matters because risk exposure is no longer limited to operational continuity. It now extends directly into financial performance, regulatory compliance, brand trust, and long-term access to supply.
One of the less explicit but most important messages in the report is how fragmentation increases vulnerability. As global systems become more politically divided, the burden of complexity grows. Nowhere is this more evident than in supply chains.
Multiple regulatory regimes, overlapping reporting requirements, and unaligned standards increase cost and dilute focus. When brands and retailers pursue disconnected approaches to climate action or responsible purchasing, suppliers absorb the complexity. The result is not greater resilience, but higher risk concentration at the most vulnerable points in the system.
The report implicitly challenges the idea that risk can be managed through isolated, company-by-company strategies. In a tightly coupled global system, fragmented responses often create new points of failure rather than reducing exposure.
Another clear takeaway from the 2026 report is the limitation of resilience narratives that focus on individual preparedness without addressing system-level design. While company-level risk management remains essential, it is no longer sufficient on its own.
Supplier resilience cannot be built brand by brand when suppliers serve dozens of customers with differing expectations, timelines, and data requests. Climate risk cannot be reduced through parallel, uncoordinated decarbonization efforts that compete for the same limited resources. Regulatory readiness cannot be achieved when suppliers are required to respond to multiple interpretations of similar rules.
The report points toward a simple but often uncomfortable conclusion. In an interconnected risk environment, coordination becomes a core risk mitigation strategy.
This is where the implications for the consumer goods industry become practical. The Global Risks Report does not prescribe solutions, but it makes clear that effective responses must operate at the level of systems, not just organizations.
For the industry, this means prioritizing approaches that reduce duplication, align expectations, and support suppliers in navigating transition pressures. It means investing in shared tools and data frameworks that enable comparability and credibility. It also means recognizing that responsible purchasing practices are not only a social issue, but a structural lever for risk reduction and long-term resilience.
These are not abstract ideals. They are business necessities in a context where risk is increasingly collective in nature.
Cascale exists to help the industry respond to exactly this kind of challenge. Not by positioning itself as the solution, but by enabling alignment where fragmentation increases risk.
Through shared tools, common metrics, and collaborative programs, Cascale helps members move from risk awareness to coordinated action. This includes supporting credible climate action that is grounded in data, advancing responsible purchasing practices that improve supplier stability, and reducing the reporting burden on manufacturers through greater alignment.
In a world where global risks are converging, the ability to act collectively and consistently across value chains becomes a competitive advantage. Cascale’s role is to support that shift, turning ambition into measurable progress while keeping the realities faced by manufacturers firmly in view.
One report quote reinforces this plainly for us: “In a world with greater competition, [cooperation] may be harder to achieve, but only by rebuilding trust and new forms of collaborative mechanisms can leaders steer us towards greater resilience and help shape a more stable future.”
The 2026 Global Risks Report reinforces three messages that are particularly relevant for consumer goods companies.
First, global risk is no longer external to supply chains. It is embedded within them, shaping cost, capacity, and continuity.
Second, fragmentation carries a rising price. The cost of unaligned approaches is increasingly borne by suppliers, and ultimately reflected back in business performance and risk exposure.
Third, collective action is becoming a core business capability. Not a values statement, and not a communications exercise, but a practical response to a risk environment that no single organization can manage alone.
The Global Risks Report is, in many ways, a mirror. It reflects the reality that many in the industry already recognize. The challenge now is not whether we understand the risks, but whether we are willing to respond in ways that match their scale and interconnected nature.
Cascale will continue working with members to translate global risk into practical, aligned action across consumer goods supply chains. Join us.
Cascale’s global membership manager, Peony Tam, represented Cascale at two events in Asia focused on advancing sustainability in consumer goods supply chains through collaboration, data, and education.
Last month, Peony Tam, Cascale’s global membership manager, represented Cascale at two events in Asia focused on advancing sustainability in consumer goods supply chains through collaboration, data, and education.
Hosted by Huali Group, one of the world’s largest footwear manufacturers and a key supplier to brands such as Nike and Puma, Tam joined more than 90 strategic material suppliers to discuss the future of sustainable manufacturing.
In her remarks, Tam introduced Cascale and the Higg Index — the industry’s leading suite of tools for measuring environmental and social impact, exclusively available on Worldly — and highlighted Cascale’s role in empowering manufacturers to improve their ESG performance.
She emphasized Cascale’s commitment to combating climate change, aligning closely with Huali’s sustainability priorities, and underscored how Cascale provides guidance, programs, and a platform for manufacturers’ voices to be heard. The session fostered new understanding of how collective data-driven approaches can strengthen transparency and resilience across global supply chains.
In a separate event, Tam returned to her alma mater, Hong Kong Baptist University, as a guest lecturer in the university’s course on corporate social responsibility and stakeholder engagement.
Building on her professional journey from student to sustainability practitioner, Tam spoke to over 40 undergraduate students from the School of Communications, about how Cascale and its partners — including Textile Exchange, ZDHC, and the Apparel Impact Institute — work together to transform the consumer goods industry through the Higg Index tools and capacity-building programs.
During an interactive exercise, students mapped industry stakeholders using Cascale’s membership network, exploring how collaboration among brands, manufacturers, NGOs, and solution providers can drive measurable progress. The session concluded with a call to action, encouraging students to stay engaged in the sustainability field and explore careers that connect purpose with impact.
A report from Better Buying, reviewing all the available literature on the connection between purchasing practices and factory-level non-compliances, and provides guidance to companies on how to improve their human rights due diligence efforts.
