At Sessùn, we have decided to forge our own path to create a sustainable and sensitive fashion that values textile know-how, supports artisanship, nurtures exchanges and promotes long-lasting partnerships as part of a conscious approach based on respect for people and resources, and the dedication to one's craft.
We aspire to make the journey even greater than the destination. That is our raison d’être.
We have always taken great pride in offering quality products, made in a way that shows respect for the people and the specialist techniques involved. Our commitments are a clear and consistent reflection of who we are. We have defined specific goals for the next few years. They revolve around four main key points.
1. To produce long-lasting clothing while managing the environmental impact and ensuring maximum traceability:
We maintain our dynamic of responsible sourcing, eco-design, and low-impact production. We systematically implement Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for our products to enhance material traceability. We provide environmental information related to our products with the aim of improving transparency for our customers.
2. To promote craftsmanship, artistic professions, and textile know-how:
We continue our endeavors to promote textile know-how and artisan skills across our collections, our stores, and our offices. We make lifestyle and art objects available to our customers, those items being curated with the aim of propagating our unique bond with culture & the arts, and craftsmanship. We support artists and artisans through our communication, partnerships, workshops, and events, such as the Sessùn Craft Prize.
3. To manage our consumption and engage our staff in ecological practices:
Each year, we measure our carbon footprint to better understand our impact and set reduction targets. We introduced the 'engagement credit' program to encourage our staff to participate in social and/or environmental initiatives. We are working on monitoring and reducing our energy and water consumption, especially by raising awareness among our staff.
4. To share our values and good practice with our suppliers:
We continue to conduct regular audits of our suppliers and offer them support and guidance to enhance their social and environmental policies. We distribute our new ethics charter to actively engage our suppliers and ensure compliance with our standards. In our commitment to embody our values and strengthen our undertakings, we are pursuing the B Corp certification label, a clear indicator of our ongoing endeavor to improve our practices.
As a company, Sessùn is a vibrant, people-oriented company, considered in its choices, even difficult ones. For us, CSR is part of a philosophy of sustainable development and global awareness. It implies that every decision is taken with mindfulness, with the will to always do our best and, above all, never stop asking how we can do better.
Read our first impact report and discover what we have implemented this year with our suppliers, our employees, our partners, our customers and the artisans we support.
Download our 2023 impact report
At Sessùn, we strive to ensure that everyone thrives and benefits from the best possible working conditions. That is why we are associating with our partners to make mutual commitments by co-signing an Ethics Charter. This charter outlines obligations for our suppliers in crucial areas such as human rights and the environment. It reflects our strong desire to share our values and promote good practices.
Read our ethics charter
To deepen our commitment, in 2020 we chose to join the ICS and use their audit standards, which we consider to be among the most demanding in the industry.
The Initiative for Compliance and Sustainability, created in 1998, is a cross-industry initiative that brings together various French brands around a shared desire to improve working conditions and ensure ongoing improvement. Besides its Code of Conduct, its manuals aimed at factories and its resolutely human and innovative approach, the ICS is also an amazing vector of transparency, collaboration and reflection. Knowledge is shared between members, as are information and audits of any joint factories, to encourage the pooling of resources, progress and compliance by suppliers, and motivate them to improve and take steps to achieve conformity.
An ICS audit can only be commissioned by a member and is carried out by an approved auditing firm to guarantee quality and impartiality. It is framed by a set of common rules in the event of non-compliance or of a critical situation and is necessarily accompanied by a Corrective Action Plan addressing any areas of improvement observed.
The approach of the ICS aligns entirely with the framework of the ILO’s agreements (International Labour Organisation), the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the employment law of producing countries. It also encompasses a strong commitment to promoting progressive practices and mindsets through the provision of risk mapping tools, the establishment of innovative partnerships focused on traceability, and the active involvement of each member brand in working groups addressing the industry's current challenges and issues.
Learn more about the ICS
We also endeavor to assist individuals with disabilities and others facing complex circumstances. We collaborate with them in producing certain products through reintegration workshops and specialised structures.
Having a tangible, positive impact on society really matters to us, which is why we are nvolved with the Maison des Femmes Marseille-Provence, a unique women’s shelter set up to welcome, listen to, care for, help and advise vulnerable women and victims of abuse.
The Maison des Femmes offers individual care plans that include medical consultations, psychological support, social accompaniment, legal advice and collective activities based around group therapy and workshops.
We are also very proud to support the annual charitable recycle sale organised by AIDES to finance AIDS research, as well as the sale organised by benefactors for Octobre Rose (National Breast Cancer Awareness Month).
Lastly, we make it a point of honor to support creativity and culture, through patronage, support and distribution, especially for artists and artisans from whom we regularly order pieces and whose work we display.
Since 2020, our stores, our head office and our showroom have been supplied with renewable energies thanks to Enercoop. In addition to supplying green electricity, the cooperative boosts and reinvests in the production of renewable energy and supports local initiatives.
In order to extend our standards to our entire chain, we also make a special effort to donate items that are faulty or beyond repair, together with unsold items from previous collections, to a company that uses them in the manufacture of material for the car industry.
Wherever possible, we prioritize transportation by sea and land-based methods over air travel. We also choose companies that offer alternative options, such as electric vehicle (EV) or bicycle deliveries in urban areas.
The shopping bags we distribute in our stores are made from brown kraft paper which is 60% recycled and 100% recyclable. The ink used is compostable and does not contain solvents.
The polybags used for online orders are made from 70% recycled materials and are sent out in energy-efficient and water-saving kraft paper packaging, sourced from sustainably-managed plantations, recyclable and reusable. All our shoes come in boxes made from recycled cardboard.
Because our customers are at the heart of Sessùn, we conducted a brand perception survey of 519 Sessùn customers, between November and December 2022.
The survey revealed that 100% of our customers have a positive view of the brand. The reasons volunteered for the strong endorsement are the quality of the products, the brand identity and the unique style of our collections.
For our customers, our strengths lie in the fabrics, comfortable cuts, color palettes and prints.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers who have remained loyal to us over many years, along with all the new customers who are discovering us. You enable us to grow.
