Openness; innovation in the textile industry

The C&A Foundation, with 8 branches spread across Europe, South America and Asia, has recently introduced the Open Apparel Registry (OAR).

The Open Apparel Registry (OAR) is an open source, web-based tool that maps clothing manufacturers worldwide and assigns a unique ID number to each of them. The goal is to become the ultimate source for identifying clothing producers and their partners by bringing together supplier lists from industry stakeholders in one central, open database.

The collected database of names, addresses and affiliated parties is powered by an advanced name and address comparison algorithm and is available free of charge for use by any company and organization. Companies can contribute to the list by creating an account. But interested people can view the database and perform searches without registering.