Riccitelli Milano produces in Italy for international fashion brands that have to answer for their supply chain. This page covers what happens when your buyers, your retailers or your own compliance team ask who makes your garments, under what conditions, and how you know.
We are a fashion production agency in Milan, working through a network of Italian factories and specialist collaborators. Because we are the producer of record rather than an introduction service, supplier documentation is our responsibility rather than something a brand has to chase workshop by workshop.
Why supplier audits reach fashion brands
Vendor onboarding used to be a formality for large retailers only. It is now the normal condition of doing business, and it arrives from four directions at once.
Retailers and marketplaces. Department stores, luxury platforms and large multibrand accounts run supplier approval before they place an order. A brand that cannot complete the pack does not get onboarded, no matter how well the collection sells.
Investors and acquirers. Supply chain due diligence is standard in any serious raise or sale. Undocumented production weighs on a valuation and occasionally is the reason a deal does not close.
Regulation. European rules on corporate sustainability reporting and supply chain due diligence push obligations down from large companies onto the suppliers and brands that serve them. The requirement travels along the chain whether or not a given brand is directly in scope.
Customers and press. A claim about how something is made is now something a brand has to be able to prove. Rules on environmental claims have made unsupported statements a legal exposure rather than a marketing style.
What an audit pack usually contains
Requirements differ by client, but the same questions come back in almost every questionnaire we complete on behalf of the brands we produce for.
Who actually makes the garment. Named production sites rather than a trading company. Address, ownership, what each site does and which part of your order it handled.
Subcontracting. Whether work leaves the named site, where it goes and whether that was disclosed. Undisclosed subcontracting is the single most common reason a supplier fails an audit.
Labour conditions. Legal employment, working hours, wages, health and safety, and the absence of forced or child labour, evidenced rather than asserted.
Code of conduct. Signed acceptance of the brand’s supplier code, and evidence that it has been communicated to the sites doing the work.
Materials and chemical compliance. What the garment is made from, and conformity with restricted substance requirements for the markets it will be sold in.
Records. Production records, inspection records and traceability documents that connect a finished garment back to its materials and its maker.
How we handle it
Our position in the chain is the reason this is manageable. A brand producing through a network of small Italian specialists faces a documentation problem that multiplies with every workshop involved. We hold the network together, so the brand deals with one team and one set of records.
We know who made what. Every order is placed with named workshops and recorded that way, so a question about a specific style has a specific answer rather than an approximation.
Subcontracting is disclosed by design. Italian production is specialised, so a single garment routinely passes through more than one set of hands. That is a strength when it is declared and a failure when it is not, and we declare it.
We complete the paperwork. Supplier questionnaires, code of conduct acceptance, site information and inspection records are prepared and returned by us, in the format the requesting client uses.
Audits are hosted, not deflected. Where a brand or its client wants to audit, we arrange access with the workshops concerned and attend.
Standards brands ask us to work within
Which standards apply depends on the product, the material and the market. Quality management systems, social compliance schemes and audit programmes are common requirements from retail clients, and material certification schemes covering organic content, recycled content, chemical safety and leather production apply to specific fibres and processes rather than to a whole collection.
We work within the schemes a brand needs and we are direct about the difference between a certification held by a mill or a workshop and a claim a brand can make about a finished garment. Chain of custody is what connects the two, and it is the part that fails audits when nobody has been keeping the record. See fashion sustainability certifications.
Why Italian production makes this easier
The compliance advantage of producing in Italy is not marketing, it is proximity and law. Production sites are inside the European regulatory perimeter, employment is governed by Italian labour law and national collective agreements, and the workshops are close enough to Milan that a site can be visited rather than described.
Distance is what makes supply chain assurance expensive elsewhere. When the people making your garments are a drive away, verification stops being an annual audit exercise and becomes something that happens continuously, because we are in those workshops while your order is being made.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a supplier code of conduct?
A supplier code of conduct is the set of labour, safety, environmental and business conduct standards a brand requires its suppliers to meet, signed by the supplier and applied to the sites doing the work. It is normally the first document requested during vendor onboarding, and acceptance has to be backed by evidence that the named production sites actually operate that way.
Can you complete our client’s supplier questionnaire?
Yes. We complete supplier and vendor onboarding documentation on behalf of the brands we produce for, in the requesting client’s own format, because we hold the information about which workshops made what.
Do you disclose subcontractors?
Yes, and it matters more in Italy than almost anywhere else. Italian production is highly specialised, so a single garment often passes through several workshops. Declared, that is a description of how the best clothes in the world are made. Undeclared, it is the most common reason a supplier fails an audit.
Can our client audit the factories that make our collection?
Yes. We arrange access with the workshops concerned and attend the audit. Being in Milan and producing through Italian districts means a site visit is a short journey rather than an expedition, which is a large part of why brands with serious compliance obligations produce here.
Are your workshops certified?
Certification sits with individual mills and workshops rather than with a network as a whole, and which certificates are relevant depends on the product and the material. Tell us what your client requires and we tell you which of our production routes already meets it and which would need to be arranged, before you commit to anything.
What labour law applies to production in Italy?
Italian employment law and the national collective agreements for the textile and clothing sector, within the wider European regulatory framework. That is a materially different starting position from supply chains where labour conditions have to be established through audit alone.
How far back can you trace a garment?
To the workshops that made it and, for materials, to the mills and suppliers we bought from. That record is built while the order runs rather than reconstructed afterwards, which is the only way it survives scrutiny.
Do you sign non disclosure agreements?
Yes, routinely, and confidentiality runs in both directions. Brands we produce for are not discussed with other clients, and the same protection applies to the workshops in our network.
Produce with a supply chain you can document
Send us the requirements your client or your compliance team has set, together with what you need made. We will tell you how it would be produced and what the record behind it would look like. Contact our Milan studio, or start from production partner in Italy.
Talk to us about your production
Tell us what you make, in what quantities and on what calendar. We will tell you what our network can absorb and how it would run.