ESG HIGHLIGHTS FY 2024/2025
Planet
- We have made progress toward achieving our science-based targets (SBTs) by 2025/2026 and reduced our Scope 1 & 2 GHG emissions by 80.3% (target: 80%).
- The percentage of partners with SBTs is increased to 70.9% (target: 90.0%) and we intensified our involvement in FASHION LEAP FOR CLIMATE.
- We increased our net revenue percentage from more sustainable products to 28.0%, although we increased the strictness of our product criteria.
People
- 42.7% of leadership positions and 30.2% of tech roles are held by women.
- We again achieved 100% private-label tier 1 factory supply chain transparency and increased tier 2 factory transparency to 98.5%.
- In net revenue terms, 54.2% of our third-party brand partners shared sustainability-related data with us.
CORPORATE CONDUCT
- Our Animal Welfare Policy forms the foundation for a compliance framework governing good animal welfare practices.
- By including internal guidelines we acknowledge our responsibility in building lasting business relationships.
OUR CURRENT ESG RATINGS
| Methodology | Rating | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
| Morningstar’s Sustainalytics | 17.6 (Low Risk) | Our ESG risk rating ranks 5/72 in the Sustainalytics Online and Direct Marketing Retail sub-industry. |
| Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) ESG Corporate Rating | B- (Prime Status) | Our rating ranks in decile 1 (top 10%) of the retail industry (all information as of February 28, 2025). |
| Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) | A- | In February 2025, we earned Leadership level (A–) in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) climate change questionnaire for the third year in a row. |
GENERAL DISCLOSURES
OUR ESG DUE DILIGENCE FRAMEWORK
OUR APPROACH
We recognize that people are the key to our everyday success. We are aware of our responsibility for the fair and considerate treatment of everyone connected to our business – whether they are working at ABOUT YOU, for our direct business partners in warehouses or call centers, or contributing to our value chain. To fulfill this responsibility, we established an ESG Due Diligence Framework with the aim of understanding, effectively managing, and mitigating our social and environmental risks.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
We operated our ESG Due Diligence Framework in six stages:
- Setting up management systems to embed practices in processes, structures, and policies to lay the foundations and formulate what we expect of stakeholders, as well as documenting everything we do
- Continuously evaluating social and environmental risks via our ESG Risk Assessment and gradually improving our assessment as a basis for prioritization
- Deriving dedicated preventive and remedial measures to cease, prevent, mitigate, and remediate across our organization to reach specified outcomes, including engaging with our employees, direct business partners, and value chain
- Monitoring the implementation of practices and the effectiveness of key practices through internal control mechanisms, third-party reviews, and external audits
- Reporting our progress regularly through our annual ESG Report
- Cooperating to enable systematic impact reductions
PLANET
SETTING SCIENCE-BASED TARGETS TO ALIGN WITH THE 1.5°C REDUCTION PATHWAY
OUR APPROACH
Our science-based targets (SBTs) were set in 2021 and approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with the 1.5 °C pathway outlined in the Paris Agreement.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
- We are committed to reducing our absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 80% by 2025/2026 from the 2019/2020 base year.
- We are committed to increasing our annual sourcing of renewable electricity from 32.7% in 2019/2020 (base year) to 100% by 2025/2026.
- We are committed to reducing our Scope 3 GHG emissions from private-label products by 35.3% per unit of value added from 2019/2020 (base year) to 2025/2026.
- We pledge that by 2025/2026, 90.0% of our business partners will have science-based targets (SBTs) for GHG emissions covering purchased goods and services, transportation, and distribution.
PROGRESSING TOWARDS MORE SUSTAINABLE THIRD-PARTY PRODUCTS
OUR APPROACH FOR THIRD-PARTY PRODUCTS
As an online fashion store, most of the products we sell are bought from third-party brand partners. Scaling the percentage of our more sustainable assortment and net revenue is a key component of our approach to reducing our resource consumption and environmental impact.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
More sustainable products in our core assortment [%]
| 2024/2025 | 2023/2024 | 2024/2025 target | |
|---|---|---|---|
| More sustainable products as a proportion of net revenue |
28.0% | 24.6% | 25.0% |
| More sustainable products as a proportion of the assortment |
17.4% | 16.3% | 20.0% |
PROGRESSING TOWARDS MORE SUSTAINABLE PRIVATE-LABEL PRODUCTS
OUR APPROACH
Our Private Labels are EDITED, ABOUT YOU the label, and several celebrity collaborations. To reduce the climate impact of our own products we are working on making more sustainable material choices, engaging with factories to reduce their direct environmental impacts and the climate impact of inbound transportation.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
Ordered private-label products that met our more sustainable criteria for most commonly used materials [%]
| 2024 | 2023 | 2025/2026 target | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cotton products with organic or recycled cotton | 80.8% | 58.4% | 80.0% |
| Polyester products with recycled polyester | 70.4% | 55.7% | 90.0% |
| Viscose products with more sustainable viscose |
84.0% | 81.1% | 90.0% |
| Products supporting more responsible leather manufacturing (Leather Working Group, chrome-free) |
77.7% | 52.3% | 80.0% |
| Wool products with more responsible or recycled wool |
49.2% | 42.4% | 75.0% |
In FY 2024/2025, we measured and analyzed the environmental performance of our tier 1 factories by using Higg FEM for a third time. Higg FEM provides factories with a clear picture of their environmental impact based on comparable data sets and helps them to identify and prioritize opportunities for impact reductions. Out of 98 active tier 1 factories in CY 2023, 69.4% (68) shared their Higg FEM 2023 responses with us, thus enabling us to assess their environmental performance.
ABOUT YOU joined the Leather Working Group (LWG) in 2020 to support more responsible leather manufacturing:
https://www.leatherworkinggroup.com/
People
CREATING A FAIR AND FRIENDLY WORK ENVIRONMENT FOR ALL
OUR APPROACH
Employees are the core of our business. We see it as our responsibility to create a work environment in which our employees can thrive and leverage their potential. We firmly believe that workforce diversity makes a fundamental contribution to the ABOUT YOU culture.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
Employees by gender
| 2024/2025 | 2023/2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Employees | ||
| Number of employees | 1,359 | 1,400 |
| New hires | 449 | 461 |
| Gender representation | ||
| Women | 61.1% | 64.3% |
| Men | 38.8% | 35.6% |
| Non-binary | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| Women employees | ||
| Women in leadership positions | 43.1% | 49.7% |
| Women in tech roles | 30.2% | 30.4% |
IMPROVING OUR PRIVATE LABELS’ SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSPARENCY AND HUMAN RIGHTS DUE DILIGENCE
OUR APPROACH
ABOUT YOU and its business model rely on workers in its upstream and downstream value chains. To manage and mitigate social risks and impacts on workers in our value chain we have several policies in place and pursue three goals:
- Working toward all our private-label tier 1 factories maintaining an acceptable social performance throughout our business partnership and thereby reducing the probability of any human rights’ violations impacting value-chain workers – in line with the principles set out in our Business Code of Conduct
- Increasingly engaging internal and external stakeholders in sustainability-related capacity-building activities
- Adapting responsible purchasing practices by our Private Labels Buying teams to minimize our negative impacts on value-chain workers
All our tier 1 factories are required to continuously undergo third-party social assessments based on international human rights standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO conventions. All new factories must have a valid amfori BSCI audit or equivalent assessment prior to onboarding, and all current tier 1 factories must have passed an amfori BSCI audit by January 2025.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
Our tier 1 transparency was once again 100%.
Our tier 2 transparency was 98.5%, up from 96.4% in the last reporting period.
ENGAGING WITH THIRD-PARTY BRAND AND LOGISTICS PARTNERS
OUR APPROACH
As an online fashion store, we aim to increase transparency and reduce our sourcing risk at a structural level through appropriate policies, engage with our brand partners to manage social risks, and work toward a uniform approach for the textile industry. We therefore collaborate with brand partners by conducting a sustainability performance assessment for brands and retailers (Higg BRM).
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
Higg BRM engagement with third-party brand partners [%]
| 2024/2025 | 2023/2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Higg BRM data shared with us in terms of previous year’s net revenue share | 54.2% | 64.3% |
| Verified Higg BRM data shared with us by the same metric | 19.4% | 22.5% |
After completing an accumulated data analysis of the shared Higg BRMs in the past three years, we reviewed the data at the brand partner level in the year under review.
ENABLING CUSTOMERS TO MAKE MORE SUSTAINABLE CHOICES THROUGH SUSTAINABILITY LABELING
OUR APPROACH
As more and more of our customers are now environmentally conscious and ethically minded, they are demanding a higher degree of transparency and sustainability in products. As there is no industry-wide definition of what constitutes a more sustainable product, we are determined to be as transparent as possible by offering more sustainable product labels and enabling consumers to make informed purchasing decisions through factual information based on environmental and social criteria.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
In FY 2024/2025, we reviewed the criteria we apply for more sustainable products as part of our annual routine assessment. Our intention was twofold:
- Alignment of our criteria definitions with new market and regulatory developments
- Incorporation of newly relevant criteria since the last update
Corporate Conduct
PARTNERSHIPS WITH SUPPLIERS
OUR APPROACH
We operate our online fashion store with the support of multiple business partners, including third-party brands, private-label suppliers, logistics partners, customer service providers as well as marketing and digital content creators. As these partnerships are essential to us, we acknowledge our responsibility through building lasting business relationships.
OUR PROGRESS IN FY 2024/2025
Three partnerships were of particular importance in the year under review:
- Together with YOOX NET-A-PORTER and Zalando, we continued working on expanding the impact and reach of FASHION LEAP FOR CLIMATE. In FY 2024/2025, the leading fashion and beauty retailers ASOS, Boozt, and the Selfridge Group joined this initiative along with Cascale as a strategic partner.
- We started working on converging effective human rights and environmental due diligence practices with other retailers when working with third-party brands.
- We co-hosted Fashion Cloud’s 2024 Fashion Transparency Summit together with Boozt, De Bijenkorf, Magasin du Nord, Wehkamp, and Zalando.
We believe that involving our direct business partners can multiply our positive impact beyond our direct operations. We are open to and actively looking into additional partnerships and collaboration opportunities.
