German footwear producer Adidas has recently begun to disclose its global supplier list publicly.

The company followed a number of other footwear and apparel companies in doing so: in mid-2005, Nike became the first major footwear company to publish a list of all of its suppliers globally on its website, after labor rights groups had pressured the company (and its peers) for several years on this issue. Levi Strauss started publishing its list later that year.

Timberland states in the FAQ section of its website that it releases the names of its supplier factories to “code of conduct specialists and other locally-based NGOs” with which it works. Puma’s website FAQ section says that its list of suppliers is publicly available on the website of the Fair Labor Association (to which Puma provides a link), but after looking on FLA’s site for several minutes, I gave up.

Disclosing supplier lists is important for several reasons. For one thing, it shows a good faith effort by the company to maintain transparency in the management of its supply chain.

For another, in principle, such disclosure allows anyone to check up on whether suppliers are complying with international labor standards in general, and company codes of conduct in particular. (In practice, however, it may be another thing actually to get access to these factories).

Further, as the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF) noted last week upon Adidas’s announcement, transparency in supply chain management “breeds a much keener attention to detail in supplier relations”.

As a next step, the Federation called on Adidas to disclose the names and locations of the suppliers that manufacture for its licensees. In the past, some companies have stated that, for legal reasons, they could not release the names of licensee suppliers.