Aveda Launches Consumer Transparency Tool For Blockchain-Traced Madagascar Vanilla
Following an innovative traceability project, Aveda leads the beauty industry in responsible sourcing.
In February 2019, Estée Lauder’s Aveda brand launched a project with Wholechain to trace the Madagascar vanilla that ends up in over 125 Aveda products using blockchain technology. The first of its scale in the beauty industry, the project culminated last week with Aveda’s official launch of a consumer transparency platform that tells the story of the vanilla’s journey from harvest at 450 smallholder farms in Madagascar, sale of the vanilla to a local co-op, shipment to Aveda’s fragrance house partner in Grasse, France, and finally to Aveda’s manufacturing facility in Blaine, Minnesota. The platform comes to life in a real-time consumer experience via scannable QR codes, enabled by Wholechain, that are now printed on products on shelves across the United States.
Why vanilla traced on blockchain?
Labor inequities, price fluctuations and quality issues tied to climate and farming challenges impact Madagascar’s vanilla supply chain, which provides 80% of the world’s vanilla, mainly through small farmers. With 25% of the country’s GDP depending on the export of vanilla, supply chain challenges have a direct impact on the daily lives of Madagascan farming communities. Vanilla’s unpredictable supply chain challenges and the scope of its local economic and social impacts make Madagascan vanilla a priority for fragrance and food brands seeking to improve their sourcing practices with traceability.
Perhaps the most salient representation of vanilla’s challenges lie in a description of the first few steps of its supply chain: cultivation, harvest and drying.
“Growing and harvesting vanilla is incredibly labor-intensive. Vanilla is an orchid vine which grows up tree trunks. After being planted, it takes three years to fruit. It is a time-consuming crop because each flower has to be pollinated by hand in Madagascar, before noon on the day it blooms. Once harvested, the vanilla beans are then dipped into hot water to stop photosynthesis. Then, the process of drying and curing can take months. When the vanilla is sorted, it is massaged, releasing oils and aroma.” — Alice Scott, All Things Supply Chain
How blockchain-enabled traceability technology stands to benefit to farmers, suppliers, brands and consumers
As Aveda Global Brand President Barbara de Laere describes in the video below, blockchain-based traceability has the potential to improve sourcing and specifically, address labor inequities and supply challenges that originate at the farm. Blockchain provides a secure platform for detailed information-sharing at every step in the supply chain including information about the people involved along the way. The lot-level information, logged on an immutable blockchain ledger, is permanently associated with a code, or hash, that accompanies the vanilla at every step — when the vanilla bean is harvested, transported, sorted, dried, packed, shipped, processed, transformed and distributed as a bottle of shampoo or perfume. This hash is a window, in other words, into the product’s lifecycle. Even information reported falsely, whether intentionally or not, is available for scrutiny and can be traced back to the informant, reinforcing a culture of transparency and accountability along the way.
This free flow of information allows stakeholders to witness details about quality and costs, anticipate challenges such as price fluctuations and identify malfeasance such as corruption that undercuts supply or payments back to farmers. Traceability creates the groundwork for transparency, and transparency allows brands, their suppliers and their suppliers’ suppliers, to ensure that they meet sustainability goals at every stage of the product’s value chain.
What transparent sourcing means for consumers
Beauty brands are notoriously rigorous about their sourcing. But even the most well-intentioned brands struggle to gain the level of transparency into their supply chains necessary to meet every standard — labor equity, product quality, consumer safety, etc. — all the time. In launching its transparency tool, Aveda is showing consumers and its industry counterparts that responsibility claims implied by words ‘fair’ (as in fair wages), ‘natural’ and ‘organic’, accompany a responsibility to act on those claims. Traceability, and the transparency it provides, arms brands with information previously unavailable to them. As more knowledge brings more responsibility, consumers should expect brands to act on their claims more thoroughly and diligently than ever before.
Our job as consumers is to pay attention: scanning QR codes to learn about our products’ journeys is a good place to begin. Aveda has made this step possible as the first beauty brand to provide QR codes on over 125 of its products. Aveda products containing blockchain-traced vanilla include its invati advanced™ hair care line and other hair, skin care and makeup products including shampure™, be curly™, hand relief™ moisturizing creme, dry remedy™, thickening tonic, tulasāra™, botanical kinetics™ and feed my lips™.
For more information, visit us at www.wholechain.com.
