Nearly 21% of surveyed brands selling into the United States have experienced shipment detention, while 75% are not fully ready to prove material origin on demand, according to TrusTrace’s “The Enforcement Era: Fashion’s Compliance Readiness in Numbers” report.
"Enforcement is no longer on the horizon. It is here. Border officials look at evidence to decide which goods move and which goods they hold. The industry has made real progress at Tier 1. But regulators ask for evidence that sits much deeper in the supply chain. The brands pulling ahead built compliance into how they operate. They did not treat it as a single project. Brands that start now can still meet every deadline," says Shameek Ghosh, CEO and co-founder of TrusTrace.
Key takeaways:
● 21% of brands selling into the United States have had a shipment detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Of those that have not, more than half (58%) consider it a realistic near-term risk.
● 75% of brands hold trusted data on their Tier 1 factories, falling to 33% at Tier 3 (yarn and fiber) and just 20% at Tier 4 (raw material and farm level); the layer enforcement agencies look for proof of origin.
● 69% of brands are actively preparing for Digital Product Passports (DPP), yet the same group rates its supply chain data accuracy at a median of three out of five.
● Only 21% run continuous, automated compliance across their suppliers, 17% still rely on spreadsheets and email, and nearly half (48%) of U.S.-selling respondents have not yet screened suppliers against U.S. government forced labor entity lists.
● Supplier resistance or limited capability is the top barrier (60%), and 63% named industry-wide supplier data standards as an accelerator, the most-cited option.
