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Hugo Boss quietly removed a subsidiary of the Chinese textile giant from its supplier list days after BuzzFeed News raised questions about the Chinese company’s deep ties to the Xinjiang region, where forced labor is rife.
Last month BuzzFeed News reported that Hugo Boss and several other major fashion brands continue to ship clothes made by the Esquel Group, a company that manufactures and spins cotton at facilities in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has waged a campaign of mass incarceration and forced labor. labor targeting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities.
Forced labor is widespread in the region and supply chain audits are so difficult that it is almost impossible to determine whether forced labor is being used there, experts say. The US imposed a trade ban on one of its Xinjiang-based subsidiaries Esquel in July 2020, and in January 2021 banned all cotton from Xinjiang, both citing concerns about forced labor.
But Hugo Boss and other clothing brands continue to source clothing from another Esquel company based in Guangdong, southern China, and import it to the United States for sale. Procurement records and company statements reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Esquel’s Guangdong branch works alongside Xinjiang-based cotton spinning mills, and Esquel’s own public statements explain that Xinjiang’s cotton production is closely linked to its global apparel operations.
Since the ban against all cotton began, at least 17 shipments of Esquel have arrived in the U.S. for Hugo Boss, according to Panjiva shipping records.
Hugo Boss did not respond to questions about whether it changed the list of suppliers, and Esquel did not immediately respond to requests for comment. BuzzFeed News published this story on January 13. According to the archived version of the brand’s website on the Internet Archive, the Esquel company was removed from the list of suppliers sometime between January 15 and 24.
Around this time, another shipment of Esquel arrived in the United States. Carrying cotton shirts and pants, the shipment arrived at the Port of Seattle aboard a so-called container ship OOCL Oakland, bound for Hugo Boss Canada, according to Panjiva shipping records. The shipment cost $50,100.
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