Artistic Milliners Built Its Traceability Infrastructure Before Brands Asked
Artistic Milliners is one of Pakistan's largest and most vertically integrated denim and textile manufacturers. Founded in 1949, the company controls its supply chain from raw fiber through finished garment. Spinning, denim weaving, dyeing, and final production all happen in-house. Capacity runs to 144 million meters of fabric and 4.3 million garments per month. The company also operates facilities in the US, Mexico, and Guatemala, and runs 100 MW of wind energy and 28 MW of solar on-site. Customers include Levi's, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Bestseller, Mango, and American Eagle.
100%
of Tier 1–4 suppliers mapped on Retraced: garment, denim, spinning & ginners
50%
reduction in time spent on traceability operations compared to three years ago
1.3–1.4 Million
garments shipped with live DPP QR codes in 2023
The scale at which Artistic Milliner operates makes traceability complex by default. But they didn't wait for brands to require it, and started working with Retraced more than three years ago.
Traceability Pays for Itself
Akbar Ali, who leads the Responsible Business Projects Department, is direct about why they moved early. Cost savings and competitive positioning came first. Regulation was an afterthought.
"We see these problems as a business case, not just for the brand side, but for ourselves. It helps us grow, and we can save a lot of money by working on changes before brands require them."
The company's first Digital Product Passport went live in 2023, in partnership with Retraced. Around 1.3 to 1.4 million garments carried QR-code labels linking consumers to verified supply chain data. At a time when most brands are still figuring out their DPP strategy, Artistic Milliners already has a live deployment to point to.
Tracing Cotton to 3,000 Farmers
The traceability work started with Artistic Milliners' own cotton projects, specifically its Million Cotton Initiative and organic cotton farmers. With more than 3,000 farmers already known and recorded, it was a manageable starting point for a pilot. Retraced gives Artistic Milliners a complete trail from Tier 1 to Tier 4, or from farm to fashion.
From there, the team expanded coverage tier by tier. Because Artistic Milliners controls most of its own supply chain, around 60% of the chain was already accounted for internally. Ginners and label makers were added directly by the Artistic Milliners team, removing the usual friction of getting external parties to self-register.
Today, all Tier 1 through Tier 4 suppliers are onboarded. The platform maps the cotton journey from individual farmers all the way to the finished garment.
50% Less Time on Traceability Operations
Before Retraced, the traceability team spent a significant share of their time chasing documents, running from department to department, emailing suppliers, waiting on responses and reconciling information manually.
"We wanted our people to do less manual work for traceability. Going department to department, supplier to supplier, collecting documents, running on emails, that was the hassle we used to suffer with. Retraced has solved a lot of that."
Retraced has cut the time required for traceability work by around 50%, with near 100% data accuracy through digital record keeping replacing manual reconciliation. The next phase is full ERP integration, which the team expects to deliver a further 50% reduction on top of that.
One Internal Record, Regardless of Which Platform the Brand Uses
Artistic Milliners works with brands across Europe and the US, and each of those brands uses different traceability platforms, different formats, and different compliance expectations. That fragmentation was one of the core challenges before Retraced.
"Retraced has given us a roadmap for how traceability can be interpreted and how we can act on it. Even for brands not on Retraced, we can use the data we've already built there."
The platform helped Artistic Milliners build an internal data foundation they can draw from regardless of which platform a brand uses.
Next Step: Certified Materials Management
A large share of Artistic Milliners' production involves certified materials, organic cotton (GOTS, OCS), recycled content (GRS), BCI, and RCS, among others. Managing certifications, tracking expiry dates, and demonstrating certified material consumption per product currently happens through their internal ERP, invisible to the brands they supply.
Certification expiry notifications are already running through Retraced. But the team wants more: a platform that shows how much certified material went into each product, makes that data visible to brands directly, and automates as much of the management process as possible. That's exactly where Retraced's Certified Materials Management module is headed.
Image source: Ron Lach via Pexels
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