Most sports brands don’t fail because they ignore sustainability. They fail because they underestimate how fast it turns into risk. A delayed shipment due to missing data, a product flagged for chemical concerns, or a sudden regulatory change in one market can quietly disrupt an entire season.
What’s different today is scale and speed. Regulations evolve continuously. Supply chains stretch wider. And the margin for error keeps shrinking. Sustainability is no longer a reporting function. It is a live operational system that influences cost, credibility, and competitiveness.
The real challenge is not compliance itself, but knowing where risks sit, how they connect, and how fast they move. At ISPO 2025 discussed, why data, transparency, and AI are now central to modern supply chain risk management.
Why Transparency Is Central to Supply Chain Risk Management
Sports brands operate some of the most complex supply chains in consumer goods, making supply chain risk management inherently challenging. Multiple tiers, dozens of countries, hundreds of materials, and thousands of chemical inputs come together in a single product line.
Marie-Luise Vielhaber, Sales Environmental Compliance at Reverse Logistics Group, explains that regulatory pressure no longer comes from one direction. “Nowadays many textile products actually have technology hardware. They might have some batteries, some electronics, so there’s a big mix of materials which immediately triggers multiple different EPR obligations and legislations.”
According to the European Union, companies selling physical goods in the EU must now comply with a growing set of transparency obligations, including CSRD, Digital Product Passports, eco-design requirements, and Extended Producer Responsibility schemes.
Another challenge brands face is regulatory interpretation across markets.
The same product may require different disclosures in the EU, the US, and Asia. Without centralized data, teams end up duplicating work and increasing the chance of inconsistencies. Marie-Luise notes that regulators increasingly compare submissions across frameworks, which makes gaps more visible than ever before and raises the stakes for supply chain risk management. Transparency also affects supplier relationships.
Brands that ask for structured data early tend to build stronger partnerships, while last-minute requests create friction. Over time, transparent systems reduce negotiation cycles, improve trust, and lower operational stress. Transparency, in this sense, becomes a tool for stability rather than exposure.
Substances of Concern: Where Risk Becomes Real
Chemical management is where sustainability risk becomes tangible. Substances of Concern, often referred to as SoCs, now affect legal compliance, recyclability, worker safety, and brand credibility at the same time.
Daniel Waterkamp, a chemical expert focused on legislation and compliance and Head of bluesign ACADEMY, points out that chemical regulation is accelerating faster than most product development cycles. “This is a huge group of substances that are now also on the list,” he explains. “And it’s important to know it’s not a nice to have. You need to comply to have access, to maintain access or to get access to the European market. And substances of concern is one of the priority parameters here.”
Under EU regulation alone, more than 4,600 substances are currently classified as Substances of Concern or under evaluation.
Chemical risk does not usually arrive as a sudden shock. It builds slowly, often unnoticed, as materials, coatings, dyes, and treatments accumulate across seasons and product lines. Marie-Luise points out that this gradual buildup is exactly why many brands underestimate the issue. Everything seems manageable until regulators ask for detailed, product-level data.
At that moment, teams often realize how difficult it is to trace chemical inputs back through multiple suppliers and production stages—an issue that directly undermines supply chain risk management, especially when documentation is fragmented or incomplete.
Daniel Waterkamp reinforces this challenge by noting that regulatory scrutiny has shifted from general policies to precise substance disclosure. When brands cannot clearly account for what is inside their products, response times stretch, costs rise, and compliance risks increase. What makes this even more critical is the long-term impact on circularity.
Director of Textile Program and Business Development at Reconomy, Lavi Aharon, highlights that gaps in chemical data do not only create short-term compliance issues. They also undermine recycling and take-back strategies. Materials containing undisclosed substances may not be safely recyclable, turning future obligations into costly liabilities and long-term challenges for supply chain risk management as extended producer responsibility schemes expand. Addressing substances of concern early helps brands protect current compliance while keeping circular ambitions realistic and scalable.
Why Manual Compliance Fails Modern Supply Chain Risk Management
Many brands still rely on supplier declarations, spreadsheets, and document folders to manage sustainability data. That approach worked when regulation moved slowly and requirements were stable. It no longer does.
Impact and Sustainability Product Manager at bluesign, Esther Paez-Bares, explains that compliance today is continuous. “What we’ve been noticing over the past months and year or so is the multiplication of various regulations,” she says. Daniel Waterkamp emphasizes this: “Company requirements and reporting obligations are laid down in another piece of legislation, which you could find in the alphabetic sustainability soup presented by Esther: the CSRD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.”
According to Deloitte, companies relying heavily on manual compliance processes spend significantly more time on validation and correction than on analysis and improvement.
Marie-Luise adds that manual systems create dependency on individuals. Knowledge sits in inboxes or personal files. When people leave, expertise leaves with them. That fragility increases operational risk.
Manual compliance also limits strategic thinking. Teams focus on meeting deadlines rather than understanding trends. Supply chain risk management becomes reactive instead of proactive.
How AI Changes Risk Prioritization?
The volume of sustainability data has surpassed what human teams can realistically process alone. And this is exactly where AI starts to play a meaningful role.
According to McKinsey, companies using advanced analytics and AI in supply chain risk management reduce disruption-related losses by up to 30 percent and improve response times significantly.
Daniel Waterkamp emphasizes that AI does not replace expertise. Algorithms identify patterns and anomalies. Humans decide how to respond. The value lies in speed, focus, and early warning.
AI also helps sustainability teams shift from reactive to predictive work. Instead of waiting for regulatory deadlines, brands can model scenarios based on emerging rules and supplier risk profiles. Timo explains that financial institutions increasingly reward predictability. Brands that can explain how risks are identified and managed over time through structured supply chain risk management appear more resilient.
To sum it up: AI alone does not remove uncertainty, but it narrows it. By highlighting patterns across materials, suppliers, and regions, AI allows teams to focus on decisions that matter most. This prioritization reduces fatigue and helps sustainability teams contribute strategically rather than defensively.
Why Manual Compliance Has Reached Its Limits?
Many brands still rely on supplier declarations, spreadsheets, and document folders to manage sustainability data. That approach worked when regulation moved slowly and requirements were stable. It no longer does. Esther Paez-Bares explains that compliance today is continuous. “Often when you need the data, you realize that it’s scattered.”
According to Deloitte, companies relying heavily on manual compliance processes spend significantly more time on validation and correction than on analysis and improvement.
Marie-Luise adds that manual systems create dependency on individuals. Knowledge sits in inboxes or personal files. When people leave, expertise leaves with them. That fragility increases operational risk.
Manual compliance also limits strategic thinking. Teams focus on meeting deadlines rather than understanding trends. Supply chain risk management becomes reactive instead of proactive.
Why Minimum Compliance Undermines Supply Chain Risk Management
Some brands still aim to meet only the minimum legal requirement. Experts warn that this approach is increasingly risky.
Esther Paez-Bares notes that regulators and third parties often fill data gaps with assumptions. “If you don’t do it, someone else will do it for you based on assumptions. Some of the current regulation will allow third parties to calculate the sustainability performance of products,” he says.
Timo adds that investors and lenders rely heavily on external ESG assessments. Data inconsistencies lower confidence and increase perceived risk, regardless of technical compliance.
Owning data means owning the narrative. Without it, others define risk on your behalf.
What Sports Brands Should Build Now?
Across all expert insights, several priorities stand out clearly to reshape supply chain risk management:
- Clear ownership of sustainability and compliance data
- Strong supplier engagement beyond tier one
- Automated data collection and validation
- AI-supported monitoring and prioritization
- Alignment between sustainability, legal, sourcing, and product teams
Conclusion: The Brands with the Best Data Will Move Fastest
Supply chain risk management has become a strategic capability. Data and AI are no longer optional tools. They are infrastructure. Brands that build strong data foundations gain flexibility, credibility, and speed. Those that wait remain reactive and exposed. In a world of continuous regulation, the competitive edge belongs to sports brands that understand their risk before others point it out.
