Finlayson wants to be the world’s most transparent company in the household textiles industry – what do the customers want?

When I started to write this text, my assumption was that customers’ image of Finlayson’s corporate responsibility would be primarily based on statements on various topics and the company’s ways of addressing such topics in the media. I was glad to find out I was wrong! In our stakeholder survey in April, we asked our customers what first comes to mind when they think about Finlayson’s responsibility, and the overwhelming majority answered recycling and recycled products. The second most popular answer was the high quality of products, and the third was ecology and the environment. Media addresses and campaigns were only the fifth most common answer. It is wonderful to see that our customers already know quite a bit about our responsibility and everyday work and do not rely on campaigns alone for information. Therefore, it seems that we have been able to inform our customers of our responsibility-related activities, particularly through our products.

Let’s recap the cornerstones of Finlayson’s work on responsibility. The willingness to address various social topics, such as the wage inequality between men and women, racism or the rights of sexual minorities. On the other hand, persevering in strategic work to develop the responsibility of our business operations. It is important for us as a company to address any disadvantages in our society, but on the other hand, the responsibility development work to, for example, reduce emissions or audit suppliers creates a strong foundation for our social actions.

Let’s get back to the original challenge. How to make customers interested in our responsibility-related activities and how to communicate the results of our responsibility report in an interesting way? Our customers are already interested and quite knowledgeable about our responsibility, but it is our duty as a company to tell them as much as possible and in an interesting way about what we have done. We also asked our customers their opinion on the area of responsibility we should particularly focus on, and the most popular answers were ethical production and working conditions as well as the environment. Therefore, it is sensible to especially focus on these two areas in our communications as our customers expect and want more information about them. It is great to see that our dream of becoming the world’s most transparent company in the household textiles industry is perfectly in line with the hopes of our customers. It is clear that we must invest more in transparent communications on the production chains of our products.

Elli Ojala
Corporate Responsibility Manager
Finlayson Oy