Despite digitalization and modern technologies, our lives still revolve around the physical products we purchase. Whether it is food or a piece of clothing, behind every product lies a vast network of manufacturers, workers, resources, and transportation systems, and what exactly happens ‘behind the scenes’ in the case of a few large companies has been revealed by Quartz journalists.
One such example is that of Agnes Gendry-Hearn from Lush Cosmetics, who, while trying to purchase sandalwood for soap and perfume production in Goa, India, had to deal with a gang of local smugglers.
– They took us to a remote warehouse where we arrived not knowing where we were being led or where the warehouse was located. We really thought they would kill us – said Agnes.
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Lush has fifteen people dedicated solely to sourcing ingredients in such exotic locations, whose work resembles that of an adventure film, as confirmed by the investigative journalism school they must go through. Each of them undertakes at least ten such trips a year, a practice that has been present since the company’s founding in 1995.
The secret to Adidas’s success, the same article states, lies in the large number of factories, each of which produces only one part of their famous sneakers.
– In one factory, for example, we only make rubber, and in another, we create the mold for the sneakers from that rubber. After that, there are factories whose sole task is to assemble the parts made in different locations – explained Ulrich Steindorf, Adidas’s production director.
