Hugo Boss has quietly removed subsidiaries of the Chinese textile giant from its supplier list BuzzFeed News has raised questions about the Chinese company’s deep ties to the Xinjiang region, where forced labor is rampant.
Last month BuzzFeed News reported that Hugo Boss and several other major clothing brands continue to carry clothes made by Esquel Group, a company that gins and spins cotton at facilities in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has been waging a campaign of mass incarceration and forced labor. Labor targeted Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities.
Forced labor is so widespread in the region and supply chain audits are so difficult to carry out that it is impossible to establish whether forced labor is being used, experts say. The US imposed trade sanctions on one of Esquel’s Xinjiang-based subsidiaries in July 2020 and banned all cotton from Xinjiang in January 2021, both times citing concerns about forced labor.
But Hugo Boss and other apparel brands were sourcing clothes from other Esquel companies in Guangdong, southern China, and importing them to the United States to sell. Procurement documents and company statements reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Esquel’s Guangdong branch works closely with its Xinjiang-based cotton spinning factories, and Esquel’s own public statements make clear that its Xinjiang cotton production is deeply intertwined with its worldwide clothing operations.
Since the ban against all cotton began, at least 17 shipments of Esquel for Hugo Boss have arrived in the U.S., according to Panjeeva shipping records.
Hugo Boss did not respond to a question about why it changed its list of suppliers, and Esquel did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The BuzzFeed News story was published on January 13. According to archived versions of the brand’s website at the Internet Archive, the Esquel companies were removed from the supplier list between January 15 and 24.
Around this time, another Esquel shipment arrived in the United States. The shipment, carrying cotton shirts and pants, arrived at the Port of Seattle on a container ship. OOCL Oakland, according to Panjiva shipping records, is bound for Hugo Boss Canada. The shipment was valued at $50,100
