Why We Publish Our Factory List

There are three factories in the world that make Field & Crest clothing. Their names, cities, specialities, and the year we started working with them are on our sustainability page, and they have been since the month we opened. People in the industry keep telling us this is either brave or stupid. We think it's neither — we think it's the minimum.

The argument against, honestly stated

The standard case for secrecy goes: your factory list is your supply chain, and your supply chain is your edge. Publish it and a bigger brand with a bigger chequebook shows up at your sewing partner's door the next quarter. This genuinely happens. It has genuinely happened to us — a much larger label now runs a line at Braga Stitchworks three benches away from ours.

Here's the thing: that was good for Braga. More stable volume, better rates for everyone, and the factory invested in a new cutting room that our camp shirts now benefit from. The edge was never the secret. The edge is the relationship — the six years of pattern notes, the hundred-wear test feedback loops, the fact that Priya video-calls their floor manager by first name about buttonhole spacing.

What publishing actually changes

Publishing the list changes our behaviour more than anyone else's. When your factory names are on your website, 'we'll fix it next season' stops being an option. Every audit, every wage review, every corner someone proposes cutting happens in the knowledge that a customer can simply ask. It is the cheapest accountability system ever invented: a table on a web page.

The edge was never the secret. The edge is the relationship.

So the list stays up. If we add a factory, you'll see it there before you see the product. And if a factory ever comes off the list, we'll write this journal the hard version of this post explaining why.