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 [Corporate Responsibility](/categories/corporate-responsibility)

 # Fast Retailing: Turning Data Into Supply Chain Action

 

##### Cascale Case Study: Fast Retailing/UNIQLO

 

 

 Oct 29, 2026 3:35 PM ET

  Campaign:  [Collaboration and Partnership](/news/campaign/collaboration-and-partnership)  ![Cascale and Fast Retailing team members at event](https://3blcdn.com/styles/carousel_2x/s3/2026-10/Fast-Retailing-Event-June-25_adj_1793302001.png)

 

Fast Retailing (TSE:9983), the parent company of UNIQLO, has embedded sustainability into its LifeWear business model, connecting product quality and durability with responsible sourcing, supply chain transparency, environmental performance, human rights, and circularity. The company combines data from the Higg Index, stewarded by Cascale and exclusively available on Worldly, with its own monitoring and traceability systems, direct factory engagement, and long-term supplier relationships to make sure a flagged risk leads to a conversation and a plan, not just a report.

Fast Retailing’s approach runs along three outcomes Cascale members work toward together: improving supply chain environmental performance, accelerating decarbonization, and transforming the purchasing practices that support decent work. Details in this case study include references from[ Fast Retailing’s 2025 Integrated Report](https://www.fastretailing.com/eng/ir/library/pdf/ar2025_en_sp.pdf) and the[ Cascale “Source of Good” podcast episode with Eshan Chan, supply chain sustainability manager at Fast Retailing](https://lnk.to/source-of-good_uniqlo).

**Key Takeaways**

- **Improving supply chain environmental performance:** Fast Retailing uses Higg Index tools, including Higg FEM and Higg FSLM, alongside its own monitoring systems to understand factory energy use and flag risks, and trained 716 factories on the Higg Index in FY2025.
- **Accelerating decarbonization:** Higg FEM data informs individual factory plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, backed by technical support and energy diagnostics.
- **Transforming purchasing practices:** Since 2022, Cascale Better Buying has given Fast Retailing structured, anonymous feedback from manufacturers on its own planning, forecasting, and lead times.
- **Deeper supply chain visibility:** Since 2023, Fast Retailing has worked to trace UNIQLO products from raw-material origins to specific garment factories, expanding its focus upstream to spinning mills, fiber-processing facilities, and raw-material sources.
- **From measurement to action:** Fast Retailing combines Higg Index data with factory engagement, technical support, and purchasing-practice feedback to address identified risks and improve performance.

## **From Facility Data to Factory-Level Action**

For any company sourcing from hundreds or thousands of factories, a standardized assessment can only go so far on its own. A facility-level score can flag a risk, but flagging isn’t the same as fixing — closing that gap requires a way to route each signal to the right follow-up, at scale, across a supply chain that often extends further upstream than a company can easily see.

Higg FEM and Higg FSLM are part of the[ Higg Index](https://cascale.org/tools-programs/higg-index-tools/), a suite of tools stewarded and governed by Cascale and delivered globally through Worldly’s technology platform. Higg FEM plays a central role in Fast Retailing’s environmental management and factory decarbonization work: the company has used Higg FEM information to understand factory energy consumption and support individual factory plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Fast Retailing pairs that data with active supplier support rather than leaving factories to interpret assessment results on their own. According to its 2025 reporting, the company provided Higg Index training to 716 factories during FY2025 — building supplier capability to use the tools well, alongside factory visits and technical support designed to help turn a flagged issue into an improvement plan.

## **Expanding Traceability Upstream**

Fast Retailing has also worked to extend visibility beyond first-tier production. According to its 2025 report, the company began extending partnerships upstream in 2023, working to trace raw materials to specific garment factories and building an in-house system to manage supply chain information, with standards covering quality, production management, environmental performance, and human rights applied across the chain.

The company reports that cotton spinning mills have been identified and audited, and traceability audits have expanded to cashmere fiber-cleaning factories and spinning mills. In 2025, Fast Retailing began sourcing wool from designated farms in Australia and conducted trial audits covering animal welfare, environmental performance, human rights, and occupational safety.

“We want to make sure that our customers can buy our products with confidence — that they know UNIQLO knows the process throughout, and where the fabrics and everything is coming from,” Chan said on “Source of Good.” “We started mapping our garment factories to fabric mills, and now to spinners and our upstream suppliers.” The company manages this information through an internal digital system that records which supplier handled each step, letting Fast Retailing verify that submitted information reflects what actually happened at each stage.

That same push for reliable visibility extends to how Fast Retailing approaches human rights risk. The company’s 2025 report states that it strengthened its assessment program during the year to better identify human rights risks and improve inspection quality, adding checks related to factory governance, organizational structures, and the reliability of information supplied during assessments. Its human rights program combines workplace monitoring, due diligence, grievance mechanisms, and direct supplier engagement; its environmental program combines Higg FEM data with training, factory visits, and technical support.

## **Built on Long-Term Supplier Trust**

None of this works without supplier relationships built over time. Fast Retailing’s 2025 report shows that 40 percent of its top 40 suppliers have relationships with UNIQLO spanning 20–29 years, while another 12 percent have worked with the company for 30 years or more. The company says these long-standing relationships create the foundation for joint work on quality, productivity, environmental performance, human rights, and working conditions — with suppliers sharing targets around GHG reductions, recycled materials, and workplace improvements, and investments in new technologies improving both efficiency and working environments.

This approach was highlighted at[ Fast Retailing’s June 2026 “LifeWear = A New Industry” event in London](https://cascale.org/resources/press-news/news-updates/fast-retailing-highlights-the-role-of-long-term-partnerships-in-sustainability-progress/), where Cascale also participated (pictured).

## **Using Cascale Better Buying to Improve Purchasing Practices**

Since 2022, Fast Retailing has used the[ Cascale Better Buying surveys](https://cascale.org/tools-programs/better-buying/) to examine how its own purchasing practices affect suppliers, and support the process of direct meetings with strategic suppliers. “With Better Buying, it gave us the scale and the analytics that we just didn’t have before,” Chan said on “Source of Good,” describing anonymous surveys now run across the wider Fast Retailing group. Chan goes on to explain that feedback helped Fast Retailing identify opportunities to improve planning, forecasting, communication, and lead times.

This provides an important complement to Higg Index assessments. While Higg Facility Tools provide insight into environmental and social performance within facilities, Cascale Better Buying helps Fast Retailing understand how its own commercial decisions influence supplier performance and working conditions.

## **Driving Results**

Fast Retailing’s combined use of standardized data, traceability, and supplier engagement is translating into measurable outcomes. Key outcomes include:

- **Scope 1 and 2 emissions:** FY2030 target of a 90 percent reduction from its own operations compared with FY2019, a target Fast Retailing surpassed in 2025.
- **Scope 3 (supply chain) emissions:** FY2030 target of a 30 percent reduction (revised upward from 20 percent in 2025 after reaching its initial target early), with emissions at 19.9. percent below the FY2019 baseline, as of FY2025).
- **Low-GHG materials:** Reaching 19.4 percent of materials used in FY2025 against a roughly 50 percent target by FY2030, with recycled polyester reaching 46.4 percent of polyester used.
- **Energy diagnostics:** Funded at select factories to identify excessive energy use and prioritize efficiency investments.

## **The Role of Collective Action**

Fast Retailing’s experience demonstrates how standardized measurement can provide a foundation for broader supply chain transformation when combined with supplier relationships, transparency, and action.

Cascale’s role has been to provide the shared infrastructure underneath that work. Higg Index tools give Fast Retailing a common framework for facility-level data instead of a proprietary one it would otherwise have to build and maintain alone — the same framework other Cascale members and their supply chain partners already use. Better Buying offers a similar foundation: a structured, anonymous channel for supplier feedback that Fast Retailing didn’t have to design itself. Fast Retailing has been a Cascale corporate member since 2014, and the results in this case study — lower supply chain emissions, visibility further upstream, and decades-long supplier partnerships — are the product of the company’s own sustained work, built on that shared foundation.

Shared tools mean Fast Retailing didn’t have to build this infrastructure alone — and a decade of consistent use is what let the company scale it, training hundreds of factories in a single year and extending traceability further upstream each year, without starting over each time. As supply chain pressures grow more complex, that’s what shared data and a wider community of members make possible: measurement that scales into collective progress.

**Putting it Into Practice**

Fast Retailing’s work draws on tools and communities any Cascale Corporate Member can use.

**Improve supply chain environmental performance.** Higg FEM is the foundation of Fast Retailing’s factory environmental work. The Higg FEM 2026 launch, the Higg FEM Peer Action Groups on Cascale Connect, and benchmarks in the Member Analytics Portal give members the same foundation.

**Accelerate decarbonization.** Turning facility energy data into reduction plans is the work the Decarbonization Knowledge Hub, the Climate Action Community of Practice, and the Manufacturer Climate Action Program (MCAP) exist to support.

**Transform purchasing practices.** Better Buying gave Fast Retailing manufacturer feedback at a scale it didn’t have before, and Higg FSLM showed it where to look closer. The Responsible Purchasing Practices Learning Series this fall, the Higg FSLM CAF v2.0 update in November, and the Decent Work Community of Practice support members doing the same.

Exploring membership? Associate and Corporate membership meet different needs. One is for credible, comparable measurement. The other adds a seat at the table shaping where the industry goes. [Explore membership →](https://cascale.org/become-a-member/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=fast-retailing-case-study)



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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