Overview
Globalized trade relies on globalized supply lines. Those are rife with risks, including hidden, second-order exposures. These are also complex, opaque, and convoluted. Horizon Advisory takes a differentiated approach to supply chain vetting: We leverage an investigation-based model, using empirical data and analysis to provide forward-looking threat assessments of exposure to indicators of human rights abuses, intellectual property theft, and security risks.
For those looking for an easy answer, we’re not a great choice. But for those who want to stay ahead of risk, build intentionally ethical supply chains, or, simply, understand the complexities of today’s industrial environment, Horizon Advisory is the only choice.
Supply Chain Investigation Protocol
Existing supply chain tracing tools are insufficient. Based on limited data sets and one-dimensional frameworks, they fail to anticipate challenges or provide actionable supply chain risk mitigation. As a result, they are failing companies, investors, and consumers.
Horizon Advisory offers a new model. We take an investigation-based approach and provide clients with forward-looking threat assessments that allow them to stay one step ahead of challenges.
Our model is based on empirical data and a bottom-up, fundamental approach to research. We begin with an unrivaled foundation of information on the international risk environment. We build on that with targeted investigation and analysis to provide threat assessments. Throughout, we account for a multi-dimensional risk landscape in which human rights, security, and environmental threats proliferate across complex, global, and often opaque supply chains.
This investigation-based approach is necessary to grapple with the reality of a business landscape shaped by kinetic and commercial warfare, de-coupling pressures, and volatile geopolitical and economic environments. We provide decision-makers with tools and insights that deliver outsize return on investment to those who want to stay ahead of the risk curve.
Horizon Advisory’s research capacity is a differentiator. We support intentionally ethical supply chains. We are empirical, risk-wise, and actionable.
Use Case: Fashion and Apparel
In 1992, a bombshell article in Harper’s Magazine documented sweatshop conditions in Nike’s factories: It described below-minimum wages, child labor, and hazardous conditions. Over the years that followed, reports continued to surface -- and Nike’s reputation continued to deteriorate. Nike’s sales dropped. Its name became synonymous with worker exploitation. It took over a decade and enormous investment for Nike to rehabilitate its image. Even still, the damage lingers.
By today’s standards, Nike had it easy.
Today, fashion companies are grappling with an unprecedented set of supply chain risks: These cover human rights abuses, geopolitical tension, and environmental degradation, ranging from forced labor in China to the environmental impacts of dyes. And these supply chain risks extend across convoluted, global, and often opaque supply chains. It’s not just Nike’s factories that matter. So do its suppliers’ factories, and those of their factories.
This is where Horizon Advisory comes in. Our investigation-based approach helps fashion companies to understand the risks in their supply chains, mitigate those, and intentionally build ethical supply chains. Our model leverages empirical data and a bottom-up, fundamental approach to research to look all across the supply chain. We deliver forward-looking threat assessments to clients that account for environmental, human rights, and security risks.
Differentiated by our empiricism, we allow companies proactively to mitigate against the risks that Nike faced in the 1990s – but in the complex threat landscape of the 2020s.