ASOS Plc (ASC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Fashion with Integrity Capital Markets event. It's our first in-person event for quite a while. So I'm really pleased that a lot of you have made it here today, maybe it's the drinks afterwards or maybe it's the content. Around the room today, we set up some product, and we'll able be to talk about any of those with some of the buyers and designers and the management team later on. So just a few small points to start with. We have our main Capital Markets Day on the 13th of October, which is a day earlier than you might than we originally advertised. So it's now the same day as our full year results, and we'll be covering our broader business strategy and business goals and targets. And of course, you'll know we're in a close period right now, so we won't be discussing any financial performance or current trading. But I'm very pleased to be taking you through our progress under our Fashion & Integrity strategy and our 2030 ambitions. I'd first like to introduce some of the owners of Fashion Integrity within ASOS who will be presenting to you today. I thought they were going to be sat there, but I can see they're in front of me. So can I first introduce Patrik Silén, who's our Chief Strategy Officer. Patrik joined us in May. He joined us -- he's a partner at McKinsey. And Patrik has got the responsibility for overseeing our entire Fashion with Integrity program and making sure it's aligned and embedded within our overall business strategy. I'd also like to introduce Jo Butler. Stand up or wave, Jo. Jo is our Chief People Officer. She joined us from Mitie where she's Group HR Director and prior to that, she was Group HR Director at itsu. She owns and leads all aspects relating to diversity, equity and our inclusion strategy. I introduced José at our Retail Capital Markets Day, there he is. José is our Chief Commercial Officer, and he owns all aspects of Fashion with Integrity relating to products and the product supply chain. Anna, who's in front of me, Anna is our General Counsel and Company Secretary. She joined ASOS nearly 8 years ago within her limit, she oversees corporate government responsibility agenda, along with the ESG governance and reporting. I'm sure some of you are familiar with Simon, Simon Platts. Simon is our responsible Sourcing Director. Simon reports to José, and he's been intrinsic to the implementation of the Fashion with Integrity strategy almost since its inception. And last but not least, I'd like to introduce Tom Byrne, who is our Head of Corporate Responsibility. Tom works with Anna, and he heads up as well the ASOS Foundation and all aspects relating to operational sustainability. Our view in ASOS in order to drive true success in the ESG space, we believe it's key for each member of the exec to lead and own the change in that area with Patrik as Chief Strategy Officer, pulling it all together and providing central guidance and overseeing the overall development of progress within this area. So what are we going to be talking to you about today? Well, Fashion with Integrity, it's been a touchstone of how we've done business in ASOS for over a decade. The reasons for these are quite simple. We asked ourselves the difficult questions early, and we didn't want to be found wanting with the answers. The key question that guided our work was, what did you do when you had a position of influence to improve the sector? In 2015, we dropped our first set of goals, and we started to embed the principles into the organization's culture, the organization's values and our ways of working. And over the years, I'm delighted and proud to say we've made a lot of progress in this area. But we recognize now it's time for bolder action, not only because it's the right thing to do. because it's important to our business. We know it's important to our customers. They're increasingly engaged on sustainability. You could refer this to as future-proofing our organization. At ASOS, we're proud to work in fashion. It's an industry that gives joy, gives people the confidence around the world. It's inspiration and it's fun. And it also happens to be a major employer around the world. But like other many sectors, there's no getting away the sustainability challenges that we all face. To address these challenges, this year, we've been working on our strategy to refresh and reinforce our commitment to Fashion with Integrity. We've conducted a materiality assessment. We've engaged with many stakeholders to identify the key issues to ASOS. And we've used those issues to set out 4 new ambitious goals for 2030. We call this the Fashion with Integrity: 2030 program. We want the ASOS customers, the ASOS suppliers, the ASOS partners and the ASOS team to feel proud and confident that we're on this. And that our global 20-something customers can our enjoy products, enjoy our experiences knowing that we've taken care of sustainability for them. And that we've ensured that no human rights are abused in the process and can check our progress with our commitment to enhance transparency and also know that we've pivoted our business operations to achieve a net zero impact on carbon at the planet. ASOS is an organization that understands its responsibility to customers. It also understands its impact on the planet. This is what Fashion with Integrity is all about ASOS. So new goals fall under 2 key headings: planet and people. Under planet is be net zero, become a net zero business by 2030, backed up by science-based targets and achieve carbon neutrality and our supply chain by 2025. Be more circular is about moving towards circular economy, away from the linear may-take, dispose model by focusing on recycling more sustainable materials, better production processes and more circular design. By that, I mean designing a product with the after use in mind, designing it upfront. Under people, be more transparent, continue to drive transparency in human rights in our supply chain, and the industry building on the legacy of great work we've already done in this space. Importantly, transparency enables scrutiny. This is important because it enables trackability. It builds confidence and it builds trust. And be more diverse, setting ourselves tough internal diversity, equity and inclusion targets, so we can drive progress in all areas of our business and be a truly inclusive platform with self-confidence at its very heart. The ASOS purpose, which drives everything we do, is to give our customers and our people the confidence to be whoever they want to be. These goals support that purpose and ensuring we offer our customers fashion that doesn't compromise on their values or our values. And they're completely integrated in what we do, built into our wider business strategy. And our Chief Strategy Officer, Patrik, will speak to this later on. I'm also confident that these goals will help reinforce ASOS' position as an ESG leader. Whilst progress and sustainability could lead to modest cost increases in some areas, we are confident that our ability to flex our agile model, collaborate with our partners, leverage tech advances will offset many of the additional costs. We also expect an increased demand from our existing customers and new customers where our research shows are increasingly choosing brands that share their values. As such, this step change in our ambition cannot be achieved alone. It's key for us to work collaborative with competitors, with brand partners, with our suppliers and industry partners to share learnings and drive the change we all want to see in this space. We also were the providers of capital, fellow business leaders, legislators to lean in, to be open and collaborate, to push everybody to make the changes we need. We do not see sustainability of the planet as a competitive issue. It's an issue to collaborate on, to speed up the flywheel of change from which all of us will benefit. So today, I'm going to take you through 3 things: our progress over the last 10 years, the process we've been through to set our new goals and our ambitions and goals for 2030. So when we first launched Fashion with Integrity in 2010, we structured our work under 4 pillars: our products, our business, our community and our customers. Our products pillar was focused on making product we create more sustainably by respecting people, animals in the planet through ethical trading, sustainable sourcing and animal welfare. Our business pillar was all about growing our business in a responsible way, minimizing the environmental impact of our growth, with particular focus on our operations, logistics and packaging. For our customers, we fulfilled our purpose of giving our customers the confidence to be whoever they want to be, ensuring we're inclusive, diverse platform that reflected our customer base. And under community, we invested time, resources into making a difference in our local communities. This was done particularly with the work of the ASOS Foundation. I'd like to focus on each of these pillars now and share some of the highlights over the last decade with you. In product, our principal was simple, wherever the ASOS brand falls, people in the supply chain should be paid the correct wages, have the appropriate working conditions, be free from slavery or bond and have access to remediation, if necessary. We asked ourselves the question, imagine if our factories, our facilities, our subcontractors had glass walls and our customers could see in. What would they say? We decided we had to work hard on this, and we've achieved the following things during that time. We decided we had to lead the way on ethical trading, reducing modern slavery and improving human rights with a particular focus on driving up standards in the U.K. In 2014, we cofounded the Fast Forward auditing program designed to tackle illegal subcontracting and underpayment of wages. For those who are not familiar with it, it's an essence and logic check. It provides greater assurance of the entire period between audits and inspections. Last year, we took the step of requiring all our branded partners that manufacture in the U.K. to sign up to the Fast Forward program. This has resulted in a step change in the number of brands that have signed up to the program, which we're confident will ultimately reduce human rights abuse in the supply chain in the U.K. Our commitment to transparency has led us to fully map our production supply base. We've mapped all the way down to Tier 3, and we're currently mapping Tiers 4 and 5. We published regular updates of our factory list on our plc website and share this with our partners. Our partners being Anti-Slavery International here, which has acted as a critical friend and critiques our approach to modern slavery. We became the first e-commerce brand to sign up a global framework agreement with IndustriALL in 2017. This offers a recognition agreement for workers in the entire supply chain, providing more eyeballs, if you like, to solve and detect any problems in our factories and supply chain. Just for info for those who haven't familiar with the tier systems, Tier 1, our main production sites; Tier 2, approved subcontractors; Tier 3, other production processes, laundry, printing; Tier 4, fabrics and materials, fabric mills; and Tier 5, raw materials, forests and farms, fields and farms. We've now published 5 in-depth modern slavery statements, which have been recognized as industry best practice for their transparency. Last year, we also became the first brand to include NGO commentary to our modern slavery statement, and we included comments from Anti-Slavery International. Of course, our work hasn't just been focused on ethical trade. We've also driven progress on switching to more sustainable fibers. This has been a priority of the business for a number of years now. And we have preexisting targets such as sourcing 100% more sustainable cotton by 2025. I am delighted with the progress we've managed to achieve, 30% of all fibers used by ASOS come from more sustainable fibers. And prepandemic, we achieved close to 85% verified more sustainable cotton across our business. We're focused on products that have high impact too, like denim. The average pair of denim uses 1,200 liters of water. We changed our production techniques. We changed our washing techniques. Using ozone washing techniques, the ASOS -- with our partners, the latest ASOS Denim has 50% less water in the laundry phase and 30% recycled material within it. One of the areas we've been forcing is the education and training, particularly around circular design. We launched our Circular Design Collection last year, last October. It wasn't only great fashion, it was created from more recycled, more renewable materials, using different patent cutting techniques designed to be worn obviously more than once and designed with the end use in mind. For example, on disassembly, the denim jacket you simply unscrew the press studs or the buttons and reuse them and recycle them. We first started our work with the Center of Sustainable Fashion in 2018 to develop an education program around the world and has since been trained to our entire commercial teams. We've released internal circular design guidebooks for people to refer to when creating products. We'll be launching external version soon. We see this as open sourcing to drive and improve the industry. Before I leave the product achievements, I'd just like to share a true story. It's a true story that epitomizes how we think, how we act and how we behave. one are my wise stories, if you like. One of our proudest moments in ASOS. In 2016, on Friday afternoon, I received an e-mail from a BBC investigative journalist who had discovered film evidence of Syrian refugees in our supply chain, our supply chain in Istanbul and that they were going to show the documentary on BBC Panorama the following week. I asked for the name and address of the factory, the number of underaged children involved. The only details I received were there were 3 refugees, there's a blue door, a yellow fire escape, and it's in Istanbul. The following morning, Simon, I introduced earlier, and a colleague were on the plane to Istanbul. They're in touch with me regularly throughout the next 3 days working with our local teams. They identified the factory, identified the Syrian refugees. They are all girls ranging from 13 to 16, and there were far more than the BBC led us to believe. Unfortunately, when Simon arrived, they all ran and we couldn't trace them. After a while, one of the girls came forward, a girl called Fatima. She stepped forward and told her story. She was 15. Her father was killed in Syria, and she had escaped with her mother and younger brothers to Turkey. She had to work because the mother was looking after younger siblings. She didn't think she was subject to human rights abuse. She thought she was helping to provide for her family. Back in Syria, she's always dreamed about becoming a doctor. Fatima helped us to identify and trace the other children. And we, with our supply partners, sponsored the girls back to school in Turkey. We've paid the missing wages and today, Fatima is about to start her medical degree. Several other high-profile brands were also manufacturing in that factory. Importantly, we did not cut and run as this could jeopardize the livelihoods of the other families who depend on the work that we provide that factory. What we did was develop a robust swift remediation and rectification plan, and we followed it through. The next pillar was our business -- of our business where we focus on reducing -- focused on reducing our operational and environmental impact. The main focus here was reducing carbon emissions from our operations arising from areas like energy use in our fulfillment centers, our offices, moving goods between our sites and our customers and, of course, our packaging. We've reported these emissions every year since 2012. In 2015, we launched our Carbon 2020 program. Since 2015, we reduced the emissions per order every year, resulting in a 45% reduction in operational emissions per order from 2016 to 2020. We achieved this through a range of measures. We prioritized road and sea freight over air where possible, working with carriers to get more ASOS orders into electric vehicles and moving through renewable energy sources across our operations. For FY '20, we not only reported a further reduction in emissions intensity, but also in absolute emissions. This is mainly driven by our Atlanta Fulfillment Center becoming fully operational, meaning we could also serve our U.S. customers from a much more local hub. This investment grew our handling capacity, improved our customer proposition and also reduced our carbon emissions. Making our packaging more sustainable has also been a key focus for us. It not only reduces emissions, but it also reduces our impact on plastic waste. We started by stripping back surplus packaging in our supply chain and product, then making that packaging from a high proportion of more sustainable materials. We've made great strides on this. Our garment bags are 90% recycled material. Our mail bags is 80% recycled material, and all are 100% recyclable. All our cardboard boxes are made from 100% recycled materials and, of course, 100% recyclable. We've reduced the range of packaging lines on ASOS own brand product by nearly 40%. And this year, we launched our first-ever reusable mail bag. This is a trial with our staff to see how it performs. And there's one over there if you want to have a look. It's in the same beautiful ASOS white noise packaging, and we'll see how the ASOSers perform with it. We've made great strides in reducing the environmental impact of our operations and our business, and we look forward to continuing this strategy over the next 9 to 10 years. As I said earlier, our brand purpose is to give young people the confidence to be whoever they want to be, and that's the focus of our community pillar. It's what it's all about. We've done this not only through our product experiences, but through public-facing partnerships we create, the products we sell and how we communicate with our customers. We've been a proud partner of the British Paralympic Association since 2015. Kits and the team are in ceremony formal wear for Rio 2016, Pyeongchang 2018 and this year's delayed Tokyo 2020 games. What a games that was, British Paralympic team coming second in the medal table. I might add first for fashion as well, both at opening and closing ceremonies, if you allow me that indulgence. Importantly, though, this partnership has meant a lot of ASOSers. It has thought a lot about making fashion and the shopping experience more accessible and more inclusive. We've enjoyed many of the successful partnerships with organizations promoting rights and acceptance for the LGBTQ community. In 2016, we launched a partnership with a U.S.-based organization GLAAD, raising over $500,000 for their work through 2 gender-neutral clothing ranges. We've also been a proud partner of London Pride in the past. And this year, with the charity Exist Loudly for Pride, which is a collection and raised money for the important work in supporting black LGBTQ youth. Finally, we want to make sure that anyone who wants to wear our clothing can, regardless of their style, regardless of where they are in the world or whatever their body shape or whatever their size, we also want our diverse customer base to feel represented by the models they see on ASOS. We make every effort to offer inclusive sizing on all our ranges and to stock the same items at the same price regardless of their size. We're now also working with a broader side range -- size range and diversity models. And through our no retouching policy, we commit to never removing anything that is part of who someone is, like stretchmarks, scars or moles. Finally, on our community. We've been supporting our communities and the communities support us for many years. Through the ASOS Foundation, we've raised over GBP 5 million in the last 5 years. This is raised through fun events by our people, and our partners and suppliers ranging from cake sales, fun runs, some not so fun runs, cycling, triathlons, tough mudders, up sailing and the annual gala dinner that raises an awful lot for the foundation. The foundation's purpose is to help young people overcome barriers and change their lives for the better. We've been a long-term partner of the Princess Trust raising and donating over GBP 1 million for the important work. To date, we see over 650 young people benefit from our joint work programs, helping young people get into fashion, get into tech and some jobs in customer care, all delivered through courses at ASOS. With Centrepoint, the ASOS Foundation was one of the original founding funders of the charity's National Youth Homelessness Helpline, which has now supported 15,000 young people and since its launch in 2017. We've since continued to fund the running of this helpline, enabling important life-changing interventions at the right moment for these vulnerable people. More recently, we partnered with OnSide Youth Zones and we're already part-funding the development and the early running costs of Youth Zone in Barnsley. It'll be the first facility of its kind in Yorkshire. And we've seen through previous slides that wherever these facilities exist, antisocial behavior disorder dropped by around 70%. A little bit of a fun fact as well. We're also the proud keeper of nearly 3 million bees across our entire portfolio. And we've got some honey upstairs, and all of you are welcome to take a sample and welcome to buy a pot as well. I understand anyone caught short on cash can pay on card, and we have electronic payment methods for those who prefer Apple Pay. All donations go to the ASOS Foundation. So through your contributions today, you'll be helping fund the great work of the foundation. Finally, during COVID-19 pandemic, we recognize the sacrifices made by our local NHS care workers across the U.K. And last year, we lent into. We raised over GBP 300,000 for local NHS Trust, national charities through fundraising projects with our customers and our people. We delivered fundraising partnerships for Oxfam. We donated GBP 1 for every face mask sold during last summer, raising GBP 230,000 for an important work, and we're one of the largest corporate donations during the pandemic. As you can see, we've achieved a lot in the past 11 years through our Fashion with Integrity program, but it doesn't mean we should stop here. We recognize the need to be more ambitious, which is why I'm proud to be presenting our new targets, our new ambitions for you today. Our chief Strategy Officer, Patrik, has overall responsibility as I've said. It's my pleasure to hand over to Patrik now, who will talk you through our new goals, our new strategy in more detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Nick. Fashion with Integrity is an integral part of our 5-part strategy to become the #1 destination for fashion-loving 20-somethings worldwide. We're a truly global retailer uniquely focused on fashion-loving 20-somethings, so we start from the wants and needs of those customers. And we make sure that they're woven into our 3-part proposition for those customers. So our ASOS brands need to have the right sustainability credentials to be relevant to them. Our ASOS platform, where we sell 150 brands, need to have a selection with the right sustainability. And we're going to be exploring new ways of offering sustainable fashion, such as resell and rental over the coming years. And our ASOS experience needs to make sustainability engaging and easy to navigate for the customer. And all of this is supported by our model in terms of the technology, processes and people, needs to be sustainable in itself and needs to help us deliver sustainability in our brands platform and experience. We're very collaborative at ASOS, and we developed this strategy using a highly collaborative process. We first carried out materiality assessment, and then we formulated ambitions and plans. So we did the materiality assessment with the help of an external reporting expert, in line with industry standards and sustainability strategy development. So we talk to employees, investors, global brand partners, suppliers, human rights and fashion sustainability organizations. We then formulated our ambitions and plans. We did this in cross-functional teams that develop proposals looking at the materiality assessment, but also looking at professional integrity so far, customer insight, benchmarking reviews of anticipated regulatory changes. And we translated the ambitions into roadmaps, plans and costings. And then we debated them long and hard at exact level to make sure that they were the right balance of stretching but also achievable. Here's the outcome of the materiality assessment. So on the vertical axis, you have each issues influence on stakeholder assessments and decisions. And then on the horizontal axis, you have their impact on economy, environment and society. And so as you can see, the issues in the top-right corner are the most material. So we found those to be environmental and social supply chain management, business ethics, compliance and resilience, greenhouse emissions, sustainable materials and packaging, and diversity, equity and inclusion. As you can see, circular product, including responsible use, wasn't quite in that top corner, but we consider it to be because we think it's going to be something that will move into that quadrant as it becomes more important in the coming years. This, by the way, is not an exhaustive list. So there are some issues that are combined into one. So for example, environmental supply chain includes water use, chemical compliance, animal welfare policies and things like that. Let me share a few points from the consumer research that has influenced our strategy. This is both external research as well as our own internal research. And we carry out a lot of consumer research every year of different types, including a strategic piece that we do every year where we survey 10s of thousands of customers across 7 markets, both customers and noncustomers. So this is some external data here. So this graph -- or these graphs show data from Global Web Index. And on the left here, you see the top 3 things consumers want brands to do. And as you can see, the percentage of them that want them to offer eco-friendly products has gone up from about 20% to 25%. And the graph on the right shows the percentage of customers saying that knowing a product is environmentally friendly will increase their likelihood of buying. The important thing here is it is highest for younger customers, 23% of 16 to 24 year olds, and that tails off. So we think these trends will continue. And as these young customers get older and having more spending power, it will drive the market even more than it does today. So next page, this is some insights from our own internal survey. And this particular graph shows data from under-30 U.K. ASOS customers. And so what these graphs show is, reasons that these customers quoted for deciding to buy less or deciding to buy more from particular brands. And as you can see here on the left, 40% of these people said that they had chosen to buy less from a brand because they didn't agree with the brand's ethics. And if you look just below where that 40% is, it doesn't have a good choice of products and I don't like the way the products look actually less important than these. So it's becoming quite an important reason just to steer clear of some brands. On the right side, you'll see reasons quoted for buying more. And you can see, I like the brand's ethics there with 25%. So not as important on the left-hand side, but important nonetheless. So it's becoming a real reason why consumers say that they avoid certain brands. On this data, we have -- we've also carried out analysis to understand which sustainability-linked attributes are correlated with purchase and loyalty. And what we've found from that is that the attribute on sustainability, some of them are statistically significant in driving purchase and loyalty. They're not as highly ranked as things around style or price or promotions and other things, but they do matter, and we think that will only increase over time. So we think this will become increasingly important, we think it's the right thing to do to future-proof us against increasing customer attention and also legislation in this space. And so it's against that backdrop that we set our new 2030 ambitions, which I'll recap now before we go into more detail on them. So just to recap what Nick said, Fashion with Integrity has guided our approach to business. And since 2010, it's been our program for moving the business forward in a more responsible and sustainable way. And we're proud of the progress we've made in those years, but now it's time for even bolder action. The 4 goals are the next step in our sustainability mission, and our updated strategy is focused on delivering positive benefits for people and minimizing our impact on the planet. And it's underpinned by these 4 goals, be net zero, be more circular, be transparent and be diverse. Achieving these will make us a net zero emissions business that embraces circular design systems and uses 100% recycled and more sustainable materials in our product and packaging. Our progress will be driven by a more diverse team with equity and inclusion at its heart, leading a business where transparency and human rights remain central to our approach. We're going to have a short 10-minute break now for comfort. So please, can you back in your seats in 10 minutes for us to start again. And when you come back, Anna will take us through our first goal within planet to be zero -- be net zero. Thank you. [Break]

Thank you, everybody, and welcome back. Now we can go through the detail of our 4 key goals across planets and people, starting with be net zero. We understand that climate change is one of the defining issues of our time and how the fashion industry contributes between 3% and 10% of carbon emissions globally. We want to ensure that we continue to play our part in the shift to a lower carbon fashion industry and also achieving a net zero economy. That's why we're setting this goal to target our carbon emissions in line with the requirements of climate science to achieve net zero by 2030 and before then, carbon-neutral operations by 2025. We will first start by delivering our new carbon reduction KPIs as that is where we can make the most impact and where our responsibilities lie. We have calculated a new set of carbon reduction targets in collaboration with Carbon Trust, using the methodology set out by the science-based Targets Initiatives. These targets are now being reviewed by the SBTi, and we look forward to having them fully validated soon. Each of the carbon reduction KPIs we will go through in this section have been calculated in line with SBTi guidance. These KPIs are the core elements of our journey to become a net zero business by 2030. We know that carbon reduction comes first, but to achieve net zero, we will also have to work with trusted partners to offset our remaining emissions with certified and scientifically robust projects. Beyond 2030, we will continue to prioritize carbon emission reduction reducing the requirement for offsets in future years. Marking a key staging post in our journey to net zero, by 2025, we will also transition the company to have a carbon-neutral operation, including our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and those associated with our deliveries and returns. This will put us on a clear pathway to achieving our net zero goal by 2030. We can now look through our associated KPIs with a focus on our newly calculated science-based targets. As mentioned, our primary focus is on emission reduction, and that is why we've calculated new carbon targets in collaboration with the Carbon Trust to ensure that these are aligned with the requirements of the latest climate science. We have done so using the methodology laid out by science-based targets initiative, and we are waiting for verification of these goals now. Firstly, we're going to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions per order by 87% by 2030 against our 2018/'19 baseline, a goal which is in line with the 1.5 degrees global temperature increase scenario. That's the target set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. We also know that it is important to tackle our Scope 3 footprint, which is where we know the majority of our carbon emissions are found. Hence, in KPIs 2 and 3, we will reduce our own brand product and transportation emissions by 58% per pound profit by 2030 against the same 2018/'19 baseline. Understanding that a significant portion of our Scope 3 emissions come from third-party brand products, we are also going to work to ensure that at least 2/3 of our third-party brands by emissions are setting similar carbon goals in line with SBTi requirements by 2025. I can now hand over to Tom, who's going to take us through these KPIs in more detail.

Thank you, Anna. Our first KPI in science-based target is to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions per order by 87% by 2030 versus our 2018/'19 year baseline. For ASOS, Scope 1 and 2 emissions are derived mainly from the energy use in our offices and our performance centers, and we've only made good progress against this goal. At the end of FY '20, Scope 1 and 2 emissions were down 26% per order versus our baseline year, made possible by our shift to renewable electricity and also progress with energy management. Since then, we've made further progress and now 75% of our global electricity is powered by renewable sources, and we conducted energy efficiency orders at all of our major sites barring Atlanta due to COVID travel restrictions. And we've got a lot of energy saving projects lined up for FY '22 and beyond. To support further gains in energy efficiency, by 2023, we will have implemented a company-wide energy management framework at all of our major sites, including offices and our performance centers. By 2025, we would have achieved at least 50% reduction in CO2 emissions per order to remain on track for our 2030 goal. We will be procuring 100% renewable electricity. And whilst we continue to decarbonize, we'll be offsetting our Scope 1 and 2 emissions as part of our carbon-neutral operations commitment. So through our work with the Carbon Trust and as per the science-based targets methodology, it was important for us to assess and calculate targets of our Scope 3 footprint. The first of this is the missions associated with our own brand products. So through KPI 2, we will reduce these by 58% per pound profit by 2030 against our baseline from '18/'19. So through our involvement in the sustainable clothing action plan, we've already made good progress here in reducing our emissions by switching to more sustainable fibers and processes, and we'll continue our progress in pursuit of this goal through the new -- through our involvement in the new Textiles 2030 program team. This will include developing a road to map to use more sustainable production processes, collaborating with our suppliers and switching to renewable energy where possible. In addition, we will make further progress in the KPI set out in our Be More Circular goal, which we'll hear about in a lot more detail from José and Simon shortly. Our third KPI in science-based target is to reduce our transportation emissions per pound profit, again 58% by 2030 versus our baseline year. And this includes all the journeys ASOS product may take from factory to performance center and out to our customers. We're making good progress here as well. And during FY '20, we saw a 23% reduction in emissions per pound profit versus our baseline year, largely driven by more localized fulfillment made possible in the U.S. by our Atlanta FC going live and being fully operational. To further progress our goal, we will engage carriers in our key territories to get them more ASOS parcels on to electric vehicles. We will harness data in new and interesting ways, improving our systems, being able to better track and manage our emissions and to identify how goods can be more -- can we moved more efficiently and how we serve our global customers more efficiently or so. By 2025, we will have achieved at least a 40% reduction in emission intensity to keep us on track for our 2030 goal. And as part of our carbon-neutral operations commitment, we will have offset all the emissions associated remaining associated with our deliveries and returns as well. Our last KPI and science-based target relates to emissions associated with third-party brand products. So we can't measure and manage these in the same way as our own brand products. So we'll be working with these brands instead to ensure that they are setting similar goals in line with science-based target requirements. And by 2025, at least 2/3 of our brands by emissions would have done this. So to date, to say over 1/3 of our brands have set or are setting these goals, and we're going to use our unique position as a multi-brand platform to share best practice between those who are further on this journey than others. So through this engagement by 2025, we'll ensure that at least 2/3 of our brands are set targets in this way, contributing overall to a lower carbon fashion industry. Thank you very much. And I'll hand back over to Anna for the summary of net zero.

Thanks, Tom. So in summary, we will become a net zero carbon business across our value chain by 2030. This is ahead of the British Retail Consortium's 2040 goal and the U.K. government's 2050 target. Our journey to net zero will be driven by our newly calculated carbon reduction targets, which we have developed in collaboration with the Carbon Trust. These targets are in line with SBTi methodology and with the SBTi verification now. Ahead of our 2030 goal, by 2025, we will have a carbon-neutral operation covering our Scope 1 and 2 emissions and those associated with our deliveries and returns, hence, building a really credible and scientifically robust offset strategy in preparation for our 2030 net zero ambition. We understand what is at stake when it comes to climate change. And through these actions, we'll continue to play our part in driving a low-carbon future for fashion. Now I can hand over to José to talk us through our second new FWI goal.

Thank you, Anna. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm going to be talking about our second goal within this pillar of planets that is Be More Circular. If you don't mind, I want to make an exercise that is pretty much read what is here because I think there is a lot of content that it takes -- it's important to keep. Our commitment is by 2030, ASOS will have shifted towards a more circular systems, ensuring that 100% of our ASOS own brand products and packaging will be made from more sustainable or recycled materials, prioritizing circular design and facilitating product recoveries programs. At ASOS, we're very clear that the biggest impact of our activity lies within our products and our supply chain. And that's why I guess it's not a surprise for anyone here that we are so focused on some of these targets and to be more precise in this target of circularity. We are, as Nick said before, we are determined to evolve from the well-known, let's say, linear model of take-make evolve into a more circular system. Obviously, this journey starts talking about the materials we use to produce our products and our packaging. But we don't want to stop there, we want to go really much further. And in that sense, we're going to have a look also weathering into account all the inputs we use in our supply chain, energy, water, chemicals, land, and this is going to be part of our reflection. We are going to take into account and incorporate the principles of circular design into everything we do. And as Nick mentioned before, that implies that we will think when we are designing a product about how this product is going to recover afterwards. And finally, and last but not least, we will also take into account and find a solution for the life at the end of the -- for the use at the end of the life of each and every product. This is a journey or, if you want, a target that is not fixed, is dynamic for us because the concept of what is a more circular or a more sustainable material changes every year. And we're going to adapt our understanding every year to the whatever type of innovation or developments on recycling techniques that come to ensure that we really have the right impact on the planet we want to have. The other thing I wanted to highlight is that we know that this is a journey we cannot do by ourselves. This is a matter of collaboration, as Nick said before. And this collaboration comes in many ways and forms. One way we will be collaborating in the framework of the Textile 2030 initiative with NGOs and with recyclers to test new materials and new techniques to make sure we are up to date. But we're also going to work and operating with the rest of the industry, with our partners, with our suppliers, with our competitors with this open source approach to make sure that we share our knowledge and our evolution so that we can really move the needle in the industry. This is not a matter of doing us and that's it. This is a matter of how we make the market change. Let me now take and go from what is the goal into the specific KPIs we're going to use to track our evolution and to make sure our success. The first one is that we want that 100% of the ASOS own brand products will be made from either recycled or more sustainable materials by 2030. The second one is that we're committing to define a public strategy in terms of circularity by 2023, so that we will be able to incorporate that and embed all these principles into our design and the design of all our products, our own brand products by 2030. Third one is that on top of the products, 100% of the packaging of our own-brand products will be made either from recycle -- sorry, will be made from recycled materials and will be widely recyclable by 2025. And finally, we're also taking the commitment to facilitate programs for recycling RVUs of our own products in the key markets where we operate by 2030. Let me highlight one idea again and repeat it even though I said that before. This is not a competition, this is about collaboration. This is this word that I heard the other day about coopetition. It's not -- the role we want to take here is not just to change what we do. is to move the needle, is to become an agent of change in the industry because this is a game that we win together or we lose together. And that is a very important idea behind this target and behind the kind of role that ASOS wants to take in this arena. Now let me hand over to Simon, who's going to walk us more into the details of the different KPIs that we have here.

Thank you, José. Coopetition, new word for everyone. I'm not sure if anyone had ever heard it before. I certainly was discussing it with José yesterday, thinking that's a much better word than collaboration. We talked about collaboration in our industry for years and it is happening. But coopetition, it's a perfect word. It's cooperative but with the competition to pull together. So absolutely the right word there. Okay. So our first KPI we're talking about today is around the goal of being 100% of our own brand products made from recycled or sustainable materials. Now to drive this KPI, we need to continue the implication of our sustainable fibers program within our retail business, while we address the wider impacts of our supply chain, such as the energy and water use. In order to do this, we need to continue driving and supporting our suppliers and our commercial teams. And this is something that we've been working on, as Nick mentioned earlier, over the last years. We want to roll out better policies and guidelines so that we're able to verify some of the ambitions that we've got. It's not just about saying, yes, we've achieved this, but it's been able to verify, so we can publicly talk about it. And when I say publicly talk about it, I mean, not just to the NGLs, not just to our staff and our suppliers but to the customer, which is going to be more and more important. Now this year, we also, as Anna talked about, we committed to the Textiles 2030 agreement, which is an industry-wide initiative. It's a voluntary agreement that builds on the learnings from the sustainable clothing action plan, SCAP, which actually came to a conclusion at the end of 2020. And this aims to engage with the majority of the fashion and textile organizations to tackle climate issues in a positive way. We will be an active part of this group as we were an active part of the previous SCAP program. And we'll be working to deliver the commitments and reduce the aggregate on things like greenhouse gases and our water footprint by 50%. And we will be sharing that information, both with our internal teams, but also with our partners as well, again, working in this coopetition way. In 2019, we set a commitment to reach 100% more sustainable cotton by 2025, and we're well on the journey towards that. Now cottons are moving fast, and we have a mixture of things within that cotton sustainability program from better cotton initiative, organic, recycled, and there's a lot more work to do within that space to get us to that 100% target, but it's something that we're well underway with. We do recognize that there's a lot more work to do. As I say, in the cotton base specifically, there's a lot more work to do in that I'll talk about a little bit later on when we get on to talking about transparency, for example. So one example, for example -- as an example, is the work we've done within cotton with the in conversion organic cotton program. And this is working with farmers and with initiatives get to them moving away from conventional cotton production methods towards organic cotton and then enabling them to certify. And things like BCI have worked very well on this, in terms of moving away less pesticides, less chemicals, better water, better yield. So really important that we continue that work. Taking it further, we will develop additional road maps on key materials, other key materials for us, such as viscose, such as nylon and such as polyester as well as ones that are perceived towards as higher-risk materials such as leather. On chemicals, we'll continue our work with the ZDHC. That's the zero discharge of hazardous chemicals program. And we'll ensure that we continue to align with the work that we're doing to make sure that our mills and our producers are following the guidelines in terms of hazardous chemicals. It's a really important part of the program. So moving on to KPI 2. So again, apologies if I'm going over things a few times, but it's really important that we get the right message across. So the second KPI commits to defining a public-facing circularity strategy by 2023 to allow us to embed circular design principles by 2030. Circular is the way we can move this business, close loop, keeping things alive. If you design for end-of-life, you might actually get there. So this is about designing for next life. Thinking about this, there's some great product here which I'd love to have a chat with you guys afterwards. Over on the right-hand side here, we've got a lot of the Circular Design Collection that we launched last September that was really well received. And just on the left-hand side here, we've got products that are made from more sustainable materials. So when we finish and before we perhaps go upstairs for a drink, I'll be around and some of my team are around, happy to chat to you about this product. If you like a weather read pointing out these different things here. Okay. So following on from the success of the Circular Collection, our circular strategy, we want to report on that, and we want to be able to go public and demonstrate the progress we're making. We recognize again that it's important to share the measurable goals that we are working on internally and that we share that momentum externally with our partners, our suppliers and our third-party brands. And in order to continue this work in this area, we recently signed up to a new 3-year agreement with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. And I've personally met Ellen and had long conversations with about the work we can do in this circular space. Now part of that commitment was the JEANS REDESIGN program. And naturally, there's some products out here from our menswear collection that already is meeting the requirements of the JEANS REDESIGN program, which is about recycled materials designed for deconstruction and reuse. So again, we're already aware of these issues, and we're already on that journey and moving to that better place. Now in addition to that, later this year, we will publicly be publishing an external version of our circular design guide. This is something that Nick mentioned earlier we were working on since 2018. We've trained all of our ASOSers, all of our commercial team in the principles of circular design. But we want to be public with that. We want to be able to share that, again not just with the suppliers and brands that work with us, but in the public domain. Again, go back to the coopetition, being able to share. I've always said, as I said at the beginning, that collaboration is key to what we do, and we've been working very well. And we're very fortunate with the ASOS platform to have over 800 brands that we can talk to and we can engage with, we can learn from, we can share learnings with, gives us that ability, gives us that power of purchase to be able to drive the needle and move things forward quicker. Okay. Moving on to KPI 3. 100% of own-brand packaging when we made from recycled materials and widely recyclable by 2025. Well, this is a big area. And again, we've got some examples over there or some of the things that we're working on. And what we've been doing for the last few years is working on reduction. So that's the first thing. Can we eradicate packaging? Can we get rid of a certain amount of packaging? But you still want that product to turn up to you in the best conditions. So it's finding that equilibrium and that right space to operate. Then we've been looking at the different materials we could use for packaging. So we've got, again, over there, we're currently on recycled materials that are 100% recyclable, but we want to make that easier for the customer, the recycling. We want to look at other materials. We want to look at things like biodegradable, compostable, water soluble. It's an irony actually that the plastic bag which was invented back in 1959, I think it was, was invented to reduce the deforestation issues that were going on at the time and to be a reusable thing. But unfortunately, because of its poor lower value, it's not been used for that. It would still be like a Tupperware box would be something that you'd use over and over and over again, but we don't. Now the reusable bag could be part of a portfolio, and we're trialing that internally to see whether that could be something we use in the future. But paper, again, recycled material, recyclable is something that we're also looking at. So there's quite a lot of options to work on in packaging. But a lot of challenges and quite a lot of misconceptions. If you hear about packaging and someone saying, "Oh yes, you just put that at the bottom in your garden and your compost it." Not necessarily always the case. So we want to make sure we've got our facts, we've got our statistics, and we look at what kind of options would be right to offer for our customer wherever they are in the world. Okay. If we move on to the fourth KPI, now facilitating programs to recycle and reuse in key markets. So again, another really important one for us. Key focus here will be about enabling customers to return their clothes and bring in that closed loop, creating a value of that supply chain, not just the supply chain but a value chain. Last year, for example, we began trialing take-backs with Oxfam and other partners to see how we could form this recovery. We don't have physical shops. So we can't say, although we did do it in our buildings, we can't say bring your clothes back and put it in a box in the shop, we'll take it from there. So we are working, we're working with our partners and our logistics partners to see if we can find better ways to close that loop and bring that product back. And we aim to try and achieve that and have a program of work for that in all our key markets. We plan to continue collaboration on recycling, reuse with specialists and look at other ways we can build on that supply chain. And we'll look to minimize and leverage these programs to drive recycling innovation. When I was a child, I remember, if I found a glass bottle on the floor, it was like, "Great, that's a bag of sweets." Because I'll take that back to a shop and here you go, there's some money. There's value in it. So we want to work. We want to look at investment and how we can bring together our industry to see if we can create better opportunities to close that loop. So we'll be working on that and our circularity strategy, which we will be publishing in 2023. We'll lay out all of the things that we need to address and our road map towards delivering that, and then we'll be able to update that as we present annually. So thank you very much. I'll be back shortly, but I'll hand back to José to just give us a summary of this principle -- these principles.

Yes. We're not trying to synthesize, to take the essence of what we said during the last minutes between Simon and myself. So the first thing that I -- the first idea that I wanted to highlight is that we're taking the commitment that 100% of our own branded products and the packaging of this product will be made from recycled or more sustainable materials by 2030. And I think this is a very clear commitment and a very strong one. The second idea I wanted to highlight is about what do we understand by circularity. For us, circularity is not only the materials, it goes beyond that. As I said, it gets into the design. And I think I want to do a little bit of a small show. I will not do it on you, don't worry. Because I always think that an image is worth a thousand words as we say in Spanish. There, you have a denim, you can take later, you go there, you move it like that, you remove the button. That saves hundreds, thousands of hours of work when you're trying to recycle that. That is the idea of circular design. How do we, from the very beginning, conceive a product that is going to create a lot of efficiencies later on in the whole value chain. And the last one is how do we are going to give a use at the end of the life of these products, recovery, recycling. So it is a much wider commitment. And last but not least, and probably my favorite idea here is this idea of collaboration, coopetition, how do we work together. We are not only talking about working with NGOs, working with international agreements or whatever. Here, we're talking about working with our competitors faced hand in hand. Here, we're talking about eventually investing together. We've seen that in other industries and we are completely sure that this is part of the solution in this industry. Otherwise, there will never be enough recycled materials in the world to comply with all these challenges. Let me now move on into our second pillar, which is people. We're going to start talking about people. And in this case, I'm going to be talking about transparency. By 2030, ASOS will have led improvement on human rights and transparency within our own supply chain and the wider fashion industry. This is our commitment, our goal here. And if you want the idea here is that at ASOS, we are aware that our impact goes beyond the planet, clearly. It includes people that's why we have two pillars, that's almost stating the obvious. But anyway, we have a role, we have an impact in the communities where we are connected through our supply chain. And we are aware of it, and we feel responsible for that. In that sense, we feel -- we think we're sure that transparency is the best tool to really make a change in this arena. Why transparency? Because we think that transparent -- where you have transparency, you have accountability, you have responsibility, you have an element that becomes a driving force to really move to action. And that's why we are completely determined to use transparency. And as Nick said before, we've been really very active in this arena, and we want to be even more in this transparency to empower the consumers to make the choices. And if you want, this is a very strong idea. Transparency gives empowerment to the consumers and the wider community to understand the impact of what they are doing. If I know what is behind this product, I can really make my choices and that's why we're really betting on transparency. I don't want to use the word radical, but I cannot find a better word, sorry about that, in this radical way, if you want. Again, let me try to add what do we mean with transparency? How are we going to measure success in transparency? The first one is that our idea is that we are going to map, we're going to extend the mapping of our supply chain in our own brand products to the full range all the way till raw materials, as Nick was saying before, to Tier 5. So that includes from the crops or the farmers or whatever. The second one is that in order to empower the consumers, we have to give them an easy access to our information. So we really want to give them easy access to the information about the sustainability credentials of 100% of our products. The third commitment, and if you want in this idea of becoming an agent of change or a catalyst, I hope I used the right word, is that we're going to try -- we're going to have an influence also with our partners with the brands that were with us. And in that sense, our commitment is that 100% of these third-party brands will have committed to their transparency pledge and the ASOS ethical trading policy by 2025. And finally, by 2023, we will be publishing an annual rights strategy and implementation report focused on freedom of association, gender empowerment, wages and modern slavery for independent monitoring by existing partners and external campaign groups. I think here it's very important if you want to highlight a couple of ideas. The first one is that we understand that are impacting those communities where we have presence goes beyond just the working conditions or -- sorry, works beyond the human rights. It also involves working conditions. It involves salaries. It involves education to a certain extent. But it goes beyond just the human rights. And the second thing is that we really want to play this role beyond our -- just what we do with our products, we want to take it a little bit further, as I said before. I'm going to hand over to Simon once again to give you a little bit more details. I'll be back with a summary in a few minutes.

Great. Thanks, Jose. Okay. So going on to our ambitions around people. So first one, 100% of ASOS own brand products supply chain mapped end-to-end, forest, field, farm, right the way through to where we're producing the garment. This is absolutely vital to what we're doing. And we've done really good work here. We're already mapped to what we call 1, 2, 3. Nick explained what the tiers were earlier on. But just to reiterate is 1 and 2 is essence garment of production. Tier 3, other parts of production that could be laundry, it could be pleating, printing and so on. When we get to 4 and we get to fabric mills, again, this is something we're working very, very hard on. And actually, on the fabric mill side of things, we're up to around about 90% visibility on our fabric mills. But there are other parts of Tier 4, things like trims and ancillaries and so on. So there's a little bit more work to do around the whole of Tier 4. And then we get to Tier 5, that is to the raw material. And this is where we've got to get that level of visibility. It's very complex. It's very -- it's like a [ root ball ] system, but it's an area we've really got to sort of roll our sleeves up, get into with our supplier base also and engage. There is tech support. There is other things going on in this space to help enable us to get that level of visibility that we need. Once we've got that visibility, we know what we need to do in those spaces. And there are different things to do in different parts of the supply chain. It's very unlikely that there will be wage issues in a mill where you've got very expensive machinery being operated by people. So -- but actually maybe on packing, maybe on the process write-down at Tier 5, there could be or there would be, that would be an area where you might find issues and exploitation of human rights. So it's important to know where we are so that we can make the changes. Now as I say, over the last 10 years, we've worked really, really well on this area, and we've got a program of work that's taken us to Tier 3, but it's about going further now. We commit to take that work further, and we commit to continue sharing that information and publicly reporting on the progress that we make. In 2021, we prioritized, as I said, gaining visibility of our Tier 4. We're up to 90% so far. As we've push further down the supply chain, we know we've got a lot more work to do, and we really will be sort of exploring how much we can get within the next 2 to 3 years. We will then carry out the deeper set of risk assessments that we need to do. And as I said earlier, we'll need to make sure that we are then applying through that visibility, applying ourselves to deal with and publicly clear on the issues that we face into. We already have what we call a [ preferred mill list ], and this includes our preferred mill list where it [ competes ] not only to the type of materials we buy, but also to their ethical and sustainability standards. So this will be something that that's really important for us as we go further through the supply chain. And then through that data collection and mapping, we will continue to push, as I said, right the way through to Tier 5. Our ambition is to link this closely to our goal, too. And that we recognize that those issues further down the supply chain are intrinsically linked, and we will accelerate our transparency program with our third-party brands as well. We mentioned earlier about getting them to sign up to the transparency place. So this is something that we will be working on with our third-party brands, and it will be across both social and environmental topics. For 2025, we will focus our efforts on mapping all the key risks, whether that be on the continued work we do at Tiers 1 to 3 and then deeper into it as we go into the supply chain. If we go to the next slide, please. Customers will be able to easily view and interact with information against the sustainability credentials of the 100% of ASOS brand products by 2030. And this is really important. This is about that customer engagement piece and bringing them on the journey, education, if you like, but in a way that ASOS knows it can do, in an engaging and informative way. We trialed the QR code on the Circular Collection. If you do have a look at some of the product, you'll see that QR code. And if you tapped on to that QR code, you could find out a lot of information on that product, on its material, on its production. And there's a lot more we can do in that space. It could be really interesting for the customer. We talked about Tier 4 transparency and traceability. And it really is, transparency is the word because this is the thing that kicks us off and that actually gets us going. Data collection and reporting and verification of that data, that's what we must be able to do. It's one thing knowing where you are and knowing what you're doing, but we need to be able to verify that and be able to publicly declare our progress on that work. And then as we say, by 2025, we want to ensure that, that customer experience is a very, very engaging experience. And you probably have looked at other people that work in this space already. And there's some great innovation and ideas out there. Okay, moving on to the third ambition for people. 100% of third-party brands on ASOS will have committed to the Transparency Pledge and the new ASOS Ethical Trade policy by 2025. Nick talked about the U.K. Transparency Pledge at the beginning and Fast Forward, and we got the whole of the industry that is on ASOS and manufacturing in the U.K. to sign up to that Transparency Pledge. So our third-party-branded engagement program will build on that. Currently, around about 15% of the brands that we work with are already signed up to that Transparency Pledge, brands like Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Under Armour, New Look, River Island, Mango already signed up to that, and there will be more. We're on this journey as an industry. So we're not just shouting this out on our own. That collaboration, that shared learning and that support that we will be able to give to the smaller brands will be at the heart of what we continue to do within the branded engagement program. So it's about driving and using our ability and the ASOS platform to drive the change for good. We've already done some great work. And in the last year, we introduced as Nick mentioned, the Fast Forward audit methodology into the U.K., which has been uptake -- it's been taken up by over 41 different brands that we -- over 40 different brands that we sell on ASOS. And this year, we're going to introduce our new ethical trading policy for our third-party brands, and that's about raising the bar across the platform. And through that ethical trade policy, we will then strengthen the work we can do with the third-party brands and minimize the risk that there could be when it comes to human rights and due diligence. We'll also source our training manuals, again, for the benefit of the wider community and for the industry, not keeping it to ourselves, not a competitive space. And in that same year, we'll start to publish a list of the third-party brands who have signed up to the Transparency Pledge and who are engaging with us on our third-party brand and engagement program. From an environmental perspective, we'll also develop further guidelines and collaborate again with these brands to share best practice, supporting the brands to address the impact across the supply chain is exactly what we have to do. So on to our final KPI within this area. From 2023, ASOS will publish an annual human rights strategy, implementation of reports focused on freedom of association, gender empowerment, wages, modern slavery, and for independent monitoring by existing partners and external campaign groups. Now that is a big one. This is really, really important. And we've worked very well with our critical friends, our key partners to make sure that we are on -- we're doing the right things that we believe are right that count towards the bigger issues that are out there. We've had a great partnership now with Anti-Slavery International, IndustriALL Global Union. We've launched a worker's rights app in Turkey and a handbook in Bulgaria. We've been working with Anti-Slavery International to provide training on human rights and welfare in Mauritius. And actually, we opened what we call the Migrant Resource Center as a bit of legacy work for Mauritius. So that anyone coming into Mauritius from other regions, such as Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka has somewhere to go and has a place they can go to find out what their conditions, what their rights are, and that's something that we've already had a massive uptake from people that are working in the Mauritius supply chain. So again, very, very important. Similar to in our industry, the majority of the work is within our supply chain are winning. So gender empowerment is key, and it's key to unlocking the wider community benefits within our sourcing countries. To strengthen and ensure the implementation of our human rights strategy, we will develop our gender equality policy, and that responds to the needs of the women in our supply chain. We've already begun developing this and establishing this with our partners. Women's organizations in 3 countries and key sourcing regions, and we will continue to roll out the program of work over these regions over the coming years. In 2023, we will publish a human rights strategy, which we will build on in several areas of our work, including work to develop long-term partnerships, again, extending our ambitions with people like Anti-Slavery International who have provided us a massive amount of help and support and information and verification. And again, through our work with the global framework agreement we have with the industrial and the global unions that we work with. And in addition to the involvement, finally, we will continue our membership with ACT. ACT is Action Collaboration Transformation. And this is about how as an industry we're moving towards delivering a living wage within our industry, a really, really important piece of work. And I believe that ACT is the right partner to be with to help deliver that scale because they're involved with all the relevant stakeholders that need to be. On human rights strategy, we reaffirm our commitments and priority in protecting human rights for all the workers within our global garment supply chain. So thanks very much for listening. I'll now hand back to Jose, who will give us a little bit of a summary.

Yes. Thank you. I'm going to try to distill all the talk into 3 [ pillars ], let's see if I can do it. So the first idea that I would really like to highlight is, as I said before, transparency for us is a key tool. A key tool to empower the consumers, to give them the right to choose, understanding all the implications of their choices and that's why we're taking this determined approach [ from the work, not radical, determined approach ] into transparency. The second is we are taking a very clear commitment, 100% of the products of our own brands, we will be mapping them all the way to raw materials, and we will be making this information available for the consumers. And the third one is that we're really willing to play our role in the wider community through our rollout as a platform and to work with the third-party brands that are with us so that they also join this journey. In that sense, I wanted to go back to one idea that Nick mentioned before. This is not a cut-and-run approach. We are going to be working with them. We're going to be collaborating with them, coopeting -- I don't know if I can say that, with them so that we move the needle. That is not a game, that is every one to win. We have to win it together. Everybody has to score in this game. This is a very strange sport. It's not about who scores the most, it's about that we all score. So this is pretty much the 3 commitments. I'm going to hand over to Jo, then she's going to be talking about the second goal in our people's pillar. Jo?

Thank you, Jose. Thank you, Simon. Are you all okay? I'm a bit worried about you. The seats are very hard, and I'm sorry about that. Does anyone actually want to just stand up for a second and just stretch? This is your invitation. As Chief People Officer, I worry about your well-being obviously. So I want to talk about diversity and being diverse. So our purpose is to give our customers the confidence to be whoever they want to be. And that goes for our people as well. So through our be diverse goal, we'll drive diversity, equity and inclusion across every aspect of our business, with a particular focus on representation at leadership level and also in our tech team, where we know we have more to do. We know through hours of [ ASOS listening ] as well as external research that having visible diverse leadership is our biggest opportunity to enact change across diversity, equity and inclusion is really important for our customers and our own ASOSers. And we want ASOS to be a place where everyone thinks they can belong, where they can succeed here. And until people see people like themselves doing well, it's really hard for them to believe that they can. And having a diverse leadership team will help us make better decisions that will help us to attract and to retain talent, and it will help us create a culture where everyone can bring their best selves to work and deliver great results. We acknowledge that diversity, equity and inclusion intersect with far broader notions of identity, whether that's disability or neurodiversity, whether it's sexual orientation, family status, gender identity, religion or more. We'll drive inclusion for all of our people through our work against this goal, ensuring that everybody at ASOS really feels that they can belong. And you can see on the screen, our 4 KPIs to measure our success. Increasing the percentage of women holding leadership roles to 50% and ensuring that we grow the percentage of ethnic minority leaders to 15%. Increasing the number of women in tech to achieve a 40% female representation by 2030. And we're also committing to having zero statistically significant differences in our engagement scores and our functional attrition rates. And finally, we'll also publish a diversity equity and inclusion strategy and a road map for the ASOS platform, our customers and for our people by 2023. We're really proud of the diverse talent that exists at ASOS and the work that we've already done against these goals. 65% of ASOS is female. And this year, we've increased the number of women holding leadership positions by 23%. And women now make up 42% of our combined leadership team. Ethnic minority ASOSers make up 19% of our workforce, which is already above the U.K. average of 14%. This year, we've increased the number of ethnic and minority ASOSers, holding leadership positions by 45%. And ethnic minority ASOSers now make up 7% of our combined leadership team. In April 2021, we launched an industry-leading future leaders program in accordance with the commitments we made through signing the Business in the Community Race At Work Charter. We pledged to take action to support ethnic minority career progression. And as a result, we prioritized the first 200 places on our new Future Leaders program to ethnic minority women in mid-level roles. We took this decision as a way to address the inequities that women fight -- ethnic minority women face in climbing the career ladder, which clearly is not just an ASOS thing, but something we wanted to take a lead on. This program is a 13-month fully funded Level 5 apprenticeship with a recognized CMI qualification. And our first cohort of 71 ethic minority women is currently underway with the second cohort starting in January. In addition, our investment in new leading-edge recruitment technology will revolutionize the way that we hire. It will transform the way we interact and engage with our workforce, putting a greater emphasis on understanding the talent that we have and enabling internal mobility. It will also help us to monitor, track and improve the diversity and inclusion through all stages of the recruitment process. This means developing and promoting from within first in addition to proactively identifying external communities of talent. Using this technology, from 2025, we will ensure that we have no more than 75% of any one gender or ethnicity in any short list for any role. In addition, we're putting inclusivity directly at the heart of our new employer value proposition. Be whoever you want to be at ASOS, which aligns with our long-established purpose and will help us to become the employer of choice for underrepresented communities and ensure a diverse talent pool across every level, helping us to achieve our goals by 2030. This will enable us to achieve 50% female representation and over 15% ethnic minority representation across our combined leadership team level by 2023 and at every individual leadership level by 2030. Another area where we're underrepresented is women in technology. 28% of the function is currently female, and we have set an ambitious goal to improve this to over 40% by 2030. In a really highly competitive market where women are in short supply, this is not going to be a quick fix. Encouraging women into tech at ASOS starts before searching for a job at ASOS, which is why we're going to continue our outreach through the foundation and leveraging the enthusiasm and amazing female role models we already have in tech at ASOS to inspire future generations of women into technical roles of the future. We've already started this through our Women in Tech network, who this year sponsored Outbox a virtual summer STEM program organized by Stemettes which brings together people interested in STEM, and it's a place where they can have fun and also get professional qualifications and experience. Another way that we've been encouraging women into the tech world is through our returnship program. We've partnered with women returners to give women who have taken time out of work back into STEM roles. The ASOS Foundation provides infrastructure, training and support to enable disadvantaged young adults to reach their potential through focused projects in the U.K., in India and in Kenya. And we'll continue to open doors, remove barriers and specifically help young women into technology and change the lives for the better through the work of the ASOS Foundation and the charity partnerships. In addition, we're going to build on the success of the Future Leaders program that I've just spoken about to launch a specific technical skills development program for women in tech, giving people the technical skills and qualifications to progress and unlocking any barriers to progression. We will have zero statistically significant differences in engagement scores and functional attrition rates all across every demographic from 2030, with all ASOSers able to be their authentic selves at work. We're all familiar with the phrase, "If you can't measure it, you can't change it." And so we've taken steps to increase the visibility of our DEI metrics throughout the business. And in January this year, we launched the ASOS Vibe, which is our new employee engagement survey. For the first time, we've been able to [ split ] engagement by teams, by location and by demographic. And this first survey was a really vital tool in benchmarking employee engagement across ASOS, and we've had to subsequently run 2 poll surveys to enable us to track engagement across demographic groups. This data helps us to focus on action in the areas that matter the most, closing the gap between engagement levels. We've also built a diversity dashboard, a data dashboard which is shared with our business leaders monthly to monitor and track diversity at all stages of the employee life cycle. And to enable us to achieve our KPIs, we'll continue to take action in the areas that matter the most with a continued focus on education and awareness, helping all ASOSers bring their authentic selves to work. The recent launch of our All In, an events run in collaboration with our employee groups, of which we now have 5, aims to educate and uplift our ASOSers, touching on all aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion from race equality and intersectionality, to celebrating different cultures and perspectives, and we'll continue to build out these events to sustain an inclusive culture and ensure that our 3,000 authentic, brave, creative and disciplined ASOSers remain all-in. Over the past year, we've been working on the development of a 12-month diversity, equity and inclusion learning program that will be mandatory for all ASOSers. We've designed a really hard-hitting animated film featuring real ASOSers sharing their personal stories, and we'll be launching the program in the next few weeks. And to bring this to life, I thought you might like to see a short trailer. I'll give you a taste of what our ASOSers will experience over the next 12 months. [Presentation]

ASOS is a diverse platform that champions self-confidence and positivity. We take our role as an inclusive brand very seriously, ensuring that we're standing up for what matters to our customers around the world and to our people. Our platform continues to have a positive impact on our customers and makes our own people proud to work at ASOS, building on the public-facing charity partnerships that Nick spoke about earlier on. And that now forms part of our business-as-usual agenda at ASOS. By 2023, we'll publish a holistic diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and a road map for the ASOS platform, our customers and our people. To summarize, through our be diverse goal, we'll drive diversity, equity and inclusion across every aspect of our business starting internally at leadership level, recognizing that having a visibly diverse leadership team in terms of ethnicity and gender is really important to our customers and our people. It will help us to attract and retain the best talent in the market and will enable better decision-making. We acknowledge that representation is only one element of being diverse, and we're going to continue to use our platform to be a force for good, driving positive change in diversity, equity and inclusion for both our ASOSers and our customers. I'm now going to hand over back to Anna to talk about the governance and reporting framework.

Thank you, Jo. So underpinning our sustainability strategy, its goals and KPIs is a new approach to ESG governance and reporting. Creating this new approach to ESG governance will ensure the effective management and delivery of the strategy. It's going to provide a new dedicated oversight at the most senior levels of the business. ESG and Fashion with Integrity will be governed by a new ESG Committee, chaired by the CEO and also attended by members of the ASOS exec and those who are accountable for delivering our FWI and ESG programs. The committee is going to meet quarterly, reporting to the ASOS Plc Board on a 6 monthly basis. Underpinning this newly formed committee will be 2 distinct working groups, the Fashion with Integrity group and the Governance working group. These 2 groups will be responsible for delivering the FWI strategy, its core goals and wider ESG risk reporting and performance management. The groups will meet regularly, collaborate on key activities and also report to the ESG Committee quarterly. Turning now to objectives in remuneration. We've mapped the key FWI deliverables and objectives that are important to land in FY '22 in order to progress our new strategy. These have been assigned to the relevant exec member responsible for that area and for their delivery, and the CEO and CFO have overall accountability. Incorporating these key deliverables, all exec members will now have objectives relating to FWI for FY '22 and onwards. FWI is actually already a part of Nick's [ incentive ] arrangements. And through these objectives, we'll be extending this to the rest of the management team as well. Finally, we're going to ensure that our approach to reporting will provide transparency on progress and performance through regular annual updates. We will report against annual progress through dedicated reporting in line with best practice guidelines such as the global reporting initiative. Initially, this is going to be along with our half year results, so updating on full year results at the following half year. We also acknowledge the importance of continuing to engage with industry-specific bodies and benchmarks such as the Fashion Transparency Index, Textiles 2030 and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. We will continue to engage and report against these important initiatives. And then finally, from 2022, we will also respond to the CDP and align our reporting to the requirements of TCFD, the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, whilst continuing to engage with ESG benchmarks such as MSCI and Sustainalytics. We're committed to transparent reporting, ensuring the progress against our new strategy and goals is clearly and regularly communicated. And now I'm going to hand back over to Nick to close down our presentation.

Thank you, guys. Thank you, presenters. Really appreciate it. We're running close on time, so I'll hand over quickly to Q&A. Bearing in mind the number of questions will jeopardize your chance of a glass of wine later, so just in case you need any incentive. I hope you've seen what we've set out today in our FWI 2030 strategy. It's authentic, it's culture within ASOS, and we set ambitious stretching goals. So with that, I'll hand over to any questions you might have.

Internal room first. Charlie, you were first. Go, Charlie. [ Adi's ] got the mic. Guys, do you want to just join me up on the stage? I'm going to play MC, Charlie, so I might throw a few questions out to the team.

Got it. So it's Charlie from Exane BNP. Two questions, please. The first one is that I think a number of your KPIs, particularly with respect to reduction of carbon emissions were framed as a ratio to profits as opposed to, for example, revenues or cost of sales, which might be a better proxy for, let's say, volumes. Just wondering what the thinking was behind that? And then secondly, it's a question, I guess, you've been asked many times before. But do you think consumers clearly claim to increasingly care about things are willing to pay what is likely at least in the near to midterm to be a premium to sort of adopt some of those higher sustainability standards in the products and the cost of making that product?

Sure. I'll take the second question first. I'll give Tom heads up to think about a good answer. I don't think customers will pay a premium, Charlie, and neither did we say that in anything we did today. What I did say or inferred is some price points might be unattainable. But I don't think customers will pay more. And there will be some marginal increase in costs that we've talked about earlier, but actually also I think customers will want to increasingly share their hard-earned pound, dollar, euro wherever they may be, we plan to care about the value, share their values, are open about our values, are transparent. And that's the research that Patrik showed you, a little over 25% of them are now making commitments and stating that that's how they'll guide their purchasing power. That's at the late millennial stage, early Gen Z, sub-20-somethings, around the 20-something point, our sweet spot. As those customers gain increasing economic and purchasing and political power, that will drive that agenda over the next 10 years. Tom, do you want to pick up the question with Charlie?

Yes. So good question. So we worked with Carbon Trust at the SBTi methodology, Science Based Targets Initiative, figuring out the best method of calculating these goals. We've set one based on economic intensity. And actually, the SBTi methodology prefers profit as a metric for that. So that's -- so we basically followed the methodology for that intensity metric. If that methodology changes in the future or if that no longer becomes a sensible metric, we can review that, go back, rebaseline and make sure that we are credible and restore following the best guidance they have.

Can I quickly go to the screen. Anne Critchlow has said, are we -- or asked whether we are planning to push any carbon offsets? And if so, when will we start?

So as part of our commitments, we will be carbon neutral in operations by 2025. So that's ahead of them. But that's for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, so our direct emissions and our deliveries and returns, so that will be now before 2025. And net zero went up before 2030. But I think what's really important here is that we're focusing on decarbonization first. We know the carbon reduction is our primary responsibility, and that's where most of our efforts are going to -- or all of our efforts are going to focus on for the coming years.

Very good. Sorry, Adam was first. And I'll come to you next Simon. Go, Adam.

And first question I've got is, there's a lot of talk in news about things being more sustainable. And for the life of me, I'm trying to work out what more sustainable means. Is there a definition -- if you're reporting against it, as you've said, it might change over time. And does the benchmark for something being more sustainable continually increase? So I've heard a lot about more sustainable if it meets BCI cotton, for example. BCI cotton is what, 25% of global cotton production? How can everybody meet this more sustainable target? And the second one is you talked about embedding circular principles. And you've talked about embedding them within 9 years. Now 9 years seems like a long time away. Is there something that could be done more quickly by yourselves or the industry?

Very good questions. Jose, why don't you pick up circular? And Simon, do you want to pick up the more sustainable fibers element?

You want to go first?

Yes. So it is evolving, and it's a moving [ phase ]. There is innovation. Some of you may have seen some of the more creative ones recently like Piñatex from pineapple, and that's a form of leather, mushroom, hemp, metal cotton. There are lots of different things. So it is an evolving and a moving phase. But it's something that we're working on that journey, and we will stay with it. As things move, we will move and adapt with it. Within cotton, BCI, moving through to organic, moving through to recycle, then looking at alternative materials. Recycle, obviously, keeps that closed loop going. So that's a great one from an opportunistic point of view. But it is very much a moving phase from a more sustainable materials concept, yes.

And just I'll add to that. One of the issues Simon referred to is, there's plenty of demand growing from all these more [indiscernible] fibers but supply hasn't yet caught up. So when we talk about cooperation, that's one of those areas where you might see people cooperating across industries to actually recycle plastics because there's a shortage of recycled plastic, develop more fibers that we can all benefit from, that's a really good example where we're looking for technology improvements and some corroborate -- collaboration to actually drive some of those improvements. Right. Jose, why don't you take circularity?

Circularity. Yes, certainly, 2030 is really far. So we all acknowledge that. I think this is a journey that is not starting today. That started a long time ago. And actually, what I was mentioning about some of the products you see in the room, we didn't produce these products to show them to you today. They are part of our daily lives. So we are already in that journey. So we will continuously adapt. The question is how long does it take to get to 100% because this is, if you want, the data that is -- the piece of data is the first 20% is the [ easy one ]. You know the famous of 20-80 rule. The last 20% is extremely complex because there are certain processes or certain parts that are more difficult. But we are not going to wait till 2030 to get to 100%. This is moving. We are going in this direction. We're already in the process. And we will be continuously doing these kind of things.

All right. Thanks, Simon -- sorry. Thanks. Simon, you're next. Adi, he's here.

I've got 3 questions. I suppose the first is, this is reliant on cooperation. You talked a lot about it. But at the moment, within your industry, you've got a number of players who don't share the same agenda as you, who are growing very, very fast. And if anything, are going to kind of impose deflation across the industry. What do you do about them? And likewise, what do you do, say, with a third-party brand if it's particularly large and meaningful to you, if they're not going in the same direction as you prepare to just discontinue a particularly large brand? And thirdly, what does this mean about time to market. If you need to review your supply chain all the way down to the fifth layer, is this going to mean that you simply can't match peers who don't have the same concerns? If you've got to kind of look at every button, every fabric and every piece of cotton or raw material all the way through, then presumably that's going to slow you down.

Do you want to pick up speed to market? I'll come back to the 2.

Do you want me to start the first?

Yes.

Well, that's a great question. How this is going to play out, obviously, nobody knows because nobody is at 100%. But the way we see it and the way we have experienced in the kind of things we're already doing, this is about -- when we talk about cooperation, this cooperation goes also with the suppliers of fabrics. So this is not about auctioning. This is about getting a continuous relationship with a set of suppliers. That will help us to have this control, to own this control over the supply chain. That will help us also not only to on the control, but probably to get part of the impact in terms of costs, but that will not slow us down. That doesn't necessarily it's going to slow us down. Certainly, I might see other challenges. But I think slow us down, getting like slower to market, certainly not. There are so many opportunities to gain time to market. That is not -- personally, I'm not concerned. And actually, in some of the products you see here, there is -- right now, there is hardly an impact.

Through 1 to 3, Simon, we've already been on this journey. And actually, what it's given, that visibility, is our ability to consolidate, to be more efficient and to speed things up. So actually, I'd take the opportunity if it's going to present itself to us rather than see it as a threat or something that would slow us down.

And I'll take your second question next. During the recent history, we've already acted upon this. If we found brands that haven't shown commitment, willingness or attitude to improve, we've taken action. And so we're really pleased that actually during the course of the last 12 months, some of the events that led to some of those brands no longer trading with us forced us to actually raise the bar, use our platform for good. Simon, do you want to talk about some of the commitments that you raised and how you're going on with third-party brands?

Yes. So we -- in the U.K., we got the whole of the brands that supply to ASOS, as I mentioned, signed up to the Fast Forward initiative, which is that audit methodology that really looks at exploitation, wages, [ Phoenix, and we call it ] where factories are closing down, avoiding taxes. It's a great base process, and audit fatigue is something we all know about as an industry. So this is a great initiative that we've put into place and we cofounded with a few other brands back in 2014. We've got those brands to sign up to the Transparency Pledge. And as I mentioned, we'll be pushing that further throughout the third-party-branded engagement program. We've been recently sourcing from Bangladesh, and we've signed -- one of the initial people to sign the new Bangladesh Accord. And the Bangladesh Accord now is presenting a model that can apply across the world in other areas that we source production from. And that's something that excites me taking the principles that we've learned from the tragedy that it was in Bangladesh and how we can apply those principles throughout -- further throughout the supply chain and in other countries.

Sorry, if I may.

Yes, go for it, Jose.

I think out of the big brands. the vast majority of them are really going in this journey with us, there might be a very few exceptions. And where we think we can really have a very positive impact is with these medium and smaller brands that many of them really want to get into that, and they normally are willing to cooperate and to move in that direction. I think in that sense, this idea of not cut and run, that we're going to sit with you and we're going to cooperate with you so that we will get there, it's always given us a very good outcome.

And on your first question, the levers of change will work in various ways. It might start with legislation. It might then be followed by capital markets. It might be then be followed by boards and business leaders deciding to make a change, and it might then be followed by consumers or it could be in a completely different order. As I talked about future-proofing our organization, raising the bar in all of these things will leave people who aren't prepared to follow it exposed. And transparency will drive customer behavior, legislative behavior and capital market behavior at a very quick pace. I don't know when that tipping point is. I'm not pretending to predict it, but that's coming faster than ever before. So those are the things that will lead people who aren't committed to doing these things, are opaque in their operations and their commitments, exposed in the eyes of consumers, regulators and capital markets. Thank you, Simon. Great question. John?

Brilliant. Three questions as well, please. First one, very quick and easy. What's the current level of airfreight in terms of sort of percentage of product that ships? Second question, the cut and run thing, I mean, it's an interesting one because obviously, certain brands didn't meet your criteria, immediately cut. If you find yourself in a lesser situation when you get down to Tier 4, 5, are you going to -- are you willing to sort of take the heat and the flack and sort it out? Or are you actually going to cut suppliers? And then a final question that Jose kind of touched on a minute ago, just in terms of the current third-party suppliers. How many of them -- how do you rate them? How do they benchmark against your sort of ideals and your process and where you'd like them to be in 2025?

Perfect. Jose, I think you can take the airfreight one. Simon, you can pick up the benchmarking. And I'll talk about the philosophy of working with suppliers.

Airfreight is not very relevant for us. We have a part of it. Obviously, it depends on the year. This is a very difficult year because [ sea ] freight is a big mess. So certainly, the data of this year is not significant at all. But it's not a big part of what we do. We try to optimize that part. So I would not be concerned about airfreight being a major problem for ASOS.

[ And your percentage, I mean... ]

I don't know if -- I think that we're not disclosing.

[ Terren ] will pick it up with you later, John.

So from a how do we judge, we've had a process I talked about how we want to raise that bar. But we have a very strong process in terms of just checking with the brands that we bring on. Do they have an ethical trade? Our 5 minimum requirements, if you like: do they have an ethical trade policy, [indiscernible] statement, do they have an animal welfare policy, do they have transparency down to Tier 2 and are they compliant with our processes needed from a chemical point of view for us to be able to trade them on a platform. So we've had that for a while. Now we are building on that, and that will be our new -- we call it branded engagement ethical trade policy, and we'll be looking at other areas. We did an event a few years ago called Future Fashion with third-party brands. And it was a great event in showing what we needed to do and a really good step towards that collaborative piece. And the engagement we picked up, not just from the Nikes and Adidases who were already on this journey, but from the smaller brands who wanted us to help them because they didn't know where to go, was phenomenal. So we'll be looking at making a broader set of sort of 5, 10 KPIs and so on minimum requirements and looking to make sure that we're monitoring it, setting targets and ambitions. And a bit like Nick saying, you mentioned Lester, our idea is that we work with and we move and therefore, we bring the industry with us. If we have to, and we can't get progress or we've got some things that's not engaging with us, then as you've seen in the past, we have to draw a line in the sand at some point and say, unfortunately then, it's not right for us.

And the philosophy on cutting and running, we don't do that. It actually sometimes means standing for and applying judgment and actually assessing people's attitude to improve. If they have an attitude to improve and they show willingness towards it, we will work with them. Cutting and running does not help the environment. If we find any more scenarios that we don't like, that's our first approach. We've put a rectification plan in place. We monitor them through it. We guide them through it. If there's no attitude, no commitment whatsoever, we have a different call to make, and it's their call that they've made for us, not our call. All right. Nearly there. I've got a question from Anne. Anne, you're busy on the text. What percentage of the CEO's compensation is linked to sustainability [indiscernible] currently? Thanks, Anne. Great question, Anne. You can send me that on WhatsApp, Anne, and I'll tell you later. You can also read it in the annual report. Thank you, Anne. Next question. George?

Thanks, Nick. I guess just following up on a question earlier, but just you've talked a lot about like consumer attitudes changing. But are you actually seeing any evidence yet of behavioral change from consumers? And then I guess following on to that, given that -- I mean we've talked a lot about initiatives around sort of circularity and so on, but given that a lot of this ultimately comes down to volume, we are just all buying too many clothes probably in reality. When consumers' behaviors do start changing, do you think that longer term, actually, we will see volumes dropping? And how are you guys thinking about that longer term?

Sure. In every moment of change, this contradictory evidence, George, you'll know that from the work that you do. Patrik, why don't you just talk about the surveys we've done and the evidence and the commitment that our customers are expressing.

Yes. So last year, we sort of stepped up our efforts in terms of customer insight and the survey work that we did. We're just repeating now for a second time the same survey we did last year, and we'll continue doing it year-on-year. And in that survey, we captured a lot of data on software today and what customers are doing in terms of what they do with clothes end of life, how much they donate, throw away, et cetera, how many are engaged in selling and buying used fashion and a number of other things like that. Now we've got a snapshot, and over time, we'll get to build up a picture of how that's changing. But it's interesting to see how for ASOS customers, how many of them, a pretty high percent, already engaged in buying and selling used clothes, which, of course, they do for a variety of reasons. One of them is for sustainability also to get hold of unique pieces and to save money. So yes, it's something that we'll be able to track and understand more over time. But in this one snapshot, we were pleased by the amount of sustainability-linked behavior that customers are engaged in. So ASOS customers, like I said, they're engaged in buying and selling used fashion. They were amongst -- the best amongst customers of different brands in terms of not throwing away very much, not as much as we might have thought or feared and in terms of a very high percentage of them donating for reuse, for example.

And on the volume point, really good question. So we are seeing contradictions and changing behaviors. We're seeing an increase in people buying and recycling their wardrobes, and that's been facilitated by other platforms. It's actually nothing new. It's just stepped up. It used to be called vintage. It's now called preowned or preloved. So we see that increasing. I don't think overall volumes will change. It might migrate towards the brands that are showing attitude, transparency and ethics towards doing it. In terms of understanding the overall impact on natural resources, actually making clothes in the first place through more sustainable fibers, less resource, less chemicals, more sustainable fibers, that's the better way to reduce the impact and with a model that has also facilitates preloved, preowned and circularity like that as well. That's our view of that work, George. But I mean that's a longer-term view. Right. A couple more questions before we go have a glass of wine. Thank you. Adi is on the way.

I got 3 questions as well. Just in terms of transparency and traceability, have you been able to sort of integrate that into some sort of climate adaptation or social adaptations or strategy to allow yourselves to react quickly, for example, if there's a drought in a certain area and -- or there's [ water stress ] in a certain area? Second question, you talked about working with cotton farmers. Have you've seen any sort of shortening of supply chains to make like closer to the ground, for example? Thirdly, a consumer-related question. We've talked a lot about sustainable production. Have there been any innovations from ASOS to actually drive sustainable consumption patterns among its consumers as well?

Okay. Really great questions. I think the first are either you, Tom or Simon.

Yes. Visibility, so we're not at that level yet. So have we've been able to impact at farm level? No, not at this point. But we -- our impact has been that we've been purchasing more of better cotton and more sustainable cotton. But that's the layer, that's the level of involvement we would get to, to getting that transparency. And then I think your other point was sort of moving towards what's now coming in our industry is biodiversity and understanding how we work within that space. And that's something also within our strategy, starts with transparency, starts with then an understanding. And biodiversity is part of our circular piece of work in an area that we are exploring and we'll have a stronger position on.

And any shortening of supply -- sorry, Tom, did you want to add something?

No, I was going to comment on the question about climate change and adapting to that and knowing its impact on your supply chain. And that's why TCFD exists. And that's why next year, hopefully, in 12 months' time, we'll be able to come back with our first analysis of that to tell you about how we understand climate change, the impacts on our business and what we're doing about that. The climate is changing now, which is why -- it's the point to give companies like us to set decarbonization goals whilst understanding the impacts on your business, it's going to be very important. And this year, that's a key piece of our work. And in 12 months' time, we can tell you more.

And shortening supply chains or lead times on cotton?

Yes. I think the opportunity presents as we get that visibility to be able to shorten. As we get closer, we're talking with a couple of big suppliers that we've been working with now in Bangladesh about getting deals done closer literally with farmers. So shorten, if you mean in terms of getting closer to it and being able to shorter and, therefore, get economies of scale and get speed to market, absolutely.

And your last question. We haven't done any work on sustainable consumption. We've done work and education with our customers on sustainable ownership. Like you don't need to wash this at 50 degrees, you can do at 30 and actually sustainable ownership and care of your garments. So we've done that [ fresh care ], your garments will last longer. We've also put lots of care labels in actually explaining features and benefits of the process, of the materials. And again, we did a lot of that with the QR code trial we did with the circular design last October. Right. I think one more and then we'll wrap up. Sorry, Mike. Yes, it's you. Well done. You've got the mic.

You've been very vocal for several years about the issues facing the U.K. manufacturing industry from an ESG perspective. I wondered in light of the 2030 program, what conditions you'd have to see existing here before increasing your U.K. sourcing?

Really good. Simon's the last to go. And so Simon, why don't you talk knowingly about it. I'll pass the mic.

Yes. [indiscernible] originally but [indiscernible] for majority hence the action, if you like.

It's not Leicester?

Yes, sorry.

So we've got an amazing supply base in the U.K., of which Leicester is the predominant area we source from a mill point of view. We've got dyeing, we've got printing, and we've got production. And we work with some amazing suppliers. And we've got opportunity to build with those suppliers and partners which would be our primary goal, really, and then look to bring on better. And there are still some great suppliers. But there is what we call the dark side of Leicester. We -- I know where that is. and we don't work in that space. But that doesn't hinder our potential growth in the U.K. We've worked -- one of our knitwear suppliers, we've worked with him. He's increased his capacity. We work with them on downtime because knitwear is a very reactive product, great one for the U.K. And then in the summer season, we might do finer gauge. He's invested in fine-gauge materials and yarns and capabilities, taken on new machines. So we work with them. We work -- with the base we've got, we want to maximize it and then add to it as we go. So as Nick mentioned, around about 2.5% in the U.K. But it can grow, and it can grow with what we've got and with new -- as long -- as well as other, what we call near-source regions for our European market, if you like, such as Turkey, North Africa, and other countries within Europe.

And in 2017, we talked about we'd love to triple our sourcing there. It was around 2.5% then. It's still 2.5%. So actually, we've grown our production in Leicester. We'd love to expand our supply base. But actually, some of the environment and the conditions and the willingness to do it properly is the thing that's held us back. But so again, we're really happy with what we've got there, and we will look to expand it. We'd love to expand it. Right, guys, that's the last question. Thank you very, very much for your time. Thank you very much for those who have come in. Thank you very much for those who have watched online. We look forward to seeing you all again on the 13th of October from our main Capital Markets Day. Everyone who is in the room now, we're going upstairs for a glass of wine. Don't forget you can buy some honey, and we will be hanging around for if there's any more questions. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.