American retailer Macy’s, Inc has marked its first-year milestones of Mission Every One, an enterprise-wide social purpose platform aimed at creating positive societal change. The company directed $1.4 billion of its spend towards the platform in 2022. The platform, which was launched in 2022, announced $5 billion of the company’s spend through 2025 would be directed towards partners, products, people, and programmes that help create a more equitable and sustainable future.

The commitments focus on three pillars of impact—people, communities, and planet—and the company has made significant progress on its journey to create a brighter future with bold representation for all.

US-based retailer Macy’s has marked the first-year milestone of Mission Every One, its enterprise-wide social purpose platform, by directing $1.4 billion of its spend towards creating a more equitable and sustainable future. The platform aims to direct $5 billion of Macy’s spend through 2025 towards partners, products, people, and programmes.

Macy’s has engaged resources and leveraged its talent and scale to embed Mission Every One into its business strategy through an integrated, holistic, and phased approach. This work has created an essential framework for business operations across the enterprise and serves as a filter for decision-making for colleagues.

The majority of the $1.4 billion spend in 2022 supported retail and non-retail diverse-owned businesses, investments in diverse retail development programmes, and the expansion of certified sustainable products.

Mission Every One has accelerated Macy’s long-standing commitment to underrepresented entrepreneurs, brands, and service providers. Through investments in diverse retail development programmes including The Workshop at Macy’s and the launch of SPUR Pathways, the company continues to develop diverse voices and create opportunities for colleagues, partners, and communities.

In 2022, Macy’s saw a year of significant growth in the diverse supplier base. Nearly 70 per cent of bids through the company’s procurement team included underrepresented groups, and those businesses were onboarded as Macy’s suppliers half of the time. This effort by the company increased the number of diverse suppliers in its supply chain and sourcing practices.

Last November, Macy’s announced SPUR Pathways, a multiyear, multifaceted funding programme designed to advance entrepreneurial growth, close wealth gaps, and shatter systemic barriers faced by diverse-owned and underrepresented businesses.

The Workshop at Macy’s is the retail industry’s longest-running retail development programme for underrepresented suppliers and has helped support and grow more than 195 diverse and women-owned businesses since 2011. In 2022, a total of $250,000 in grants were awarded to programme participants.

For the company’s commitment towards the planet, Macy’s expects more than half of cotton products within private brands to be sustainably sourced by the end of 2023.

“Our social purpose platform, Mission Every One, builds on our heritage of corporate citizenship, fuelling a more equitable and sustainable future for our people, communities and planet,” said Jeff Gennette, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc. “Over the past year, our business has infused this work enterprise-wide, transforming how we operate and make decisions. Through our $1.4 billion of spend in 2022, we see the effect both our corporate and individual contributions can have. Mission Every One has galvanised our brands and our people and led to the creation of programmes like SPUR Pathways, aimed at shattering systemic barriers for underrepresented businesses, and contributed more than $34 million to our community partners. We remain committed to Mission Every One’s ongoing evolution and goal of driving positive societal change.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DP)