Suppliers

Suppliers play a fundamental role in the Falabella Group’s businesses and are a key component in the Company’s sustainability strategy. The Group’s relationship with its suppliers is based on mutual collaboration, so that suppliers and the Company can help each other grow, together.

By the end of 2014, the Group had a total 20,436 active suppliers.

Falabella and Sodimac have an alliance with Sedex, the world’s largest collaborative platform for ethical and responsible business practices in global supply chains. Sedex helps companies improve their supply chain standards in key areas, including labor, environmental, health and safety and business ethics issues. Suppliers must make a commitment to comply with the ethical commerce norms of Sedex’ members (SMETA).

1,667 suppliers of Falabella’s retail businesses have Vendor Compliance clauses in their contracts, which aim to specify ethical and human rights conditions that they must comply with in their production process. We wish to highlight the progress made in this area, considering that, in 2013, only 421 contracts included social responsibility clauses.
In 2014, a total of 2,895 suppliers were audited, a larger number than the 1,397 audits carried out in 2013.

The Group strives to pay its suppliers promptly, especially suppliers that are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), since these companies are the engines of development in the countries in which the Group operates.

In 2014, the Group worked with 10,276 SMEs. Of these, 7,164 were paid in 30 days or less, which is twice as many SME suppliers paid in that timeframe than the year before.

Given the nature of Falabella’s different businesses, none of its business units have a supplier that, independently, represents more than 10% of the business unit’s total purchases during the period.