building robust supply chains through sustainable purchasing
building robust supply chains through sustainable purchasing
Practical solutions combining field experience, people-centered approaches and business insight to strenghten supplier relationships and purchasing practices.
Responsible Purchasing | Supplier Relationships | Human Rights | Traceability | Strategic Sourcing Intelligence
Practical solutions combining field experience, people-centered approaches and business insight to strenghten supplier relationships and purchasing practices.
Responsible Purchasing | Supplier Relationships | Human Rights | Traceability | Strategic Sourcing Intelligence
SERVICES
Responsible purchasing transformation
Responsible purchasing isn't a constraint, it's a compass.
We help you design meaningful performance frameworks and support in building the kind of vendor relationships where challenges are shared, solutions are co-created, and progress is real.
Supplier relationships, performance & governance
Stronger supplier relationships are built on collaboration, not only transactions.
We help you build purchasing strategies that are both robust and values-driven, grounded in the realities of your supply chain — not just compliant on paper.
Human rights in practice
Meaningful change starts with people, not checklists.
We help companies turn human rights expectations into practical action through field-based assessments, meaningful worker engagement and supplier capacity building. By listening first and working alongside suppliers, we help create practical improvements that benefit both people and business.
Strategic sourcing Intelligence
Empowering your teams with knowledge from the field
We help you anticipate geopolitical, economic and supply chain developments accross Asia, translating complex realties into practical business intelligence that supports purchasing strategies and informed decision-making.
Traceability & raw materials
Visibility creates better decisions.
We help you improve supply chain visibility by mapping suppliers, understanding raw material origins and identifying risks before they become business issues. Greater transparency supports stronger purchasing decisions, meaningful due diligence and long-term supply chain performance.
business cases
Strategic purchasing & ESG development support
Location: Hong Kong
Industry: Industry/retail
Context: The visionary CEO of a sourcing office based in Hong Kong wanted to further integrate sustainability actions into its purchasing culture and practices. The challenge was to turn this ambition into practical initiatives that could create tangible value for internal teams, suppliers and customers over time.
Our approach: We worked alongside leadership and teams to define a vision, engage key stakeholders and build a roadmap aligned with the company's culture, business priorities and supplier maturity.
Outcomes
- Materiality assessment involving key internal & external stakeholders.
- 5-year implementation roadmap.
- Stronger internal ownership and gradual integration of sustainability into purchasing and supplier management practices
Why it matters: Building sustainable business practices requires more than ambitious commitments. It requires a shared vision, practical ownership and solutions aligned with the realities of the business.
Sourcing countries intelligence & geopolitical monitoring
Location: China, India, South-East Asia
Industry: Furniture, decoration, gifts, textile
Context: COVID, wars, carbon footprints, time pressure... many factors led to travel restrictions over the last years and some purchasing teams felt the gap widened with the reality of their sourcing countries. They have access to global news, but often lack visibility into the local developments, business environment and societal changes that may infuence their understanding of their key sourcing countries.
Our approach: We quarterly monitor local business, regulatory, economic and societal developments across sourcing countries, combining field experience and local knowledge to identify the signals that matter for purchasing teams.
Outcomes:
- Quarterly or bi-annual 90 minutes news briefings
- Practical business insights from sourcing countries.
- Increased awareness of emerging local developments.
- Better understanding of sourcing environments across Asia
Why it matters: Good purchasing decisions need to take into account the economic, political, geopolitical and societal environment of their sourcing countries.
Human rights assessment & capacity building
Location: China, India, North Africa, West and Eastern Europe
Industry: Textile, furniture, decoration, metal, printing, accessories,...
Context: While social audit bring a standard one-shot picture of a supplier compliance, companies here searched for added-value solutions for their most strategic partners. Indeed lasting improvements cannot be achieved through social audits alone. They require more dialogue, practical engagement and continuous improvement.
Our approach: We combine field-based assessments, supplier dialogue, workers voice and capacity building to identify practical improvement opportunities. Our approach focuses on strengthening working conditions, respecting workers' dignity and helping suppliers progressively embed better management practices, while giving purchasing teams a deeper understanding of the strengths, challenges and maturity of their strategic suppliers.
Outcomes:
- Clear identification of suppliers' best practices and challenges on human/basic environmental stakes.
- Practical & realistic supplier improvement co-built roadmap.
- Empowered suppliers, who are given the opportunity to improve over time, not to check a box but to sustainably and genuinely progress.
Why it matters: Products are made by people. Respecting workers' dignity and improving working conditions contribute to stronger suppliers, better products quality, lower risks and more robust supply chains.
Supplier governance & responsible purchasing
Location: Hong Kong
Industry: Retail & Manufacturing
Context: A large industrial group wanted to building meaningful supplier performance frameworks and go beyong operational KPIs. The challenge was to combine quantitative indicators with qualitative supplier evaluation to support governance, continuous improvement and strategic sourcing across a portfolio of more than 400 suppliers.
Our approach: We designed a supplier performance framework combining operational KPIs, sustainability criteria and qualitative assessments. Working closely with purchasing and quality teams, we developed practical governance tools to segment suppliers, prioritise improvement efforts and support more informed sourcing decisions.
Outcomes
- Performance framework covering 440 suppliers.
- Balanced evaluation combining quantitative and qualitative indicators.
- Practical supplier segmentation to support sourcing priorities
- Governance framework for continuous supplier performance reviews
Why it matters: The most valuable supplier performance frameworks do more than measure performance: they help companies make better sourcing decisions and build stronger supplier relationships.
Traceability/ raw materials projects
Location: China
Industry: Textile (cashmere)
Context: A French cashmere retailer wanted to tracing cashmere back to its origin and better understand its chinese supply chain. Having a first survey made in Europe was not enough. To ensure product pristine quality at all time, understand where fibres were coming from and assessing social, environmental and animal welfare practices of the stakeholders was essential. Only then can tangible actions be taken to generate impact.
Our approach: We combined field investigations, Tier 1 supplier engagement and value chain mapping to understand the cashmere supply chain beyond documentation. By visiting goat farms, engaging directly with herders and tracing raw materials through the different stages of production, we gained first-hand insight into production practices, animal welfare, environmental challenges and the realities faced by the communities behind the fibre.
Outcomes:
- Improved understanding of the cashmere value chain in China.
- Creation of a bespoke charter and framework covering identified key stakeholders.
- Strenghtened partnerships with rank 1 supplier to improve upstream traceability and engagement
Why it matters: because only field-based approach helped bridge the gap between documented supply chains and the realities experienced by the people producing the fibre.
Awareness training on health, safety & human rights in supply chains (quality teams/ buyers)
Location: on-site or online. China, India, South-East Asia, Europe
Industry: Decoration, furniture, textile
Context: While often traveling to factories, operational teams are not always equipped to identify health and safety issues and see purchasing impact on human rights. The challenge was to develop practical awareness and observation skills that could be applied during supplier visits and day-to-day collaboration.
Our approach: We designed a blended learning programme combining online awareness sessions with field-based training. Using real factory situations and practical case studies, we helped teams better understand how purchasing practices influence working conditions, while strengthening their observation skills and ability to engage constructively with suppliers.
Outcomes:
- Awareness programme delivered to purchasing, quality & operational teams
- Online and field-based training sessions
- Teams empowerment with developing more accute observation skills for participants when visiting their suppliers (and other places too!)
- More consistent identification and escalation of health, safety, human rights concern.
Why it matters: building more responsible supply chains starts is not just 1-department responsibility, it's everyone!
Partners
Thank you for trusting Mind Up
BIO - marjorie hobin
For more than twenty years, I have been exploring the intersection of purchasing, people and sustainability across Asia. I believe robust supply chains are built when business performance, people and field realities come together.
Marjorie Hobin
Purchasing - Sustainability - Asia
My journey started with a passion for China and Mandarin, leading me to live in Shanghai, where I spent 18 years working alongside suppliers, factories and purchasing teams across Asia.
During eight years at Saint-Gobain Asia Sourcing Office, I led international sourcing and procurement projects while developing expertise in strategic purchasing, supplier governance and manufacturing.
In 2013, I took a year to travel around the world.
Returning to Shanghai, I founded Mind Up Consulting in 2015.
Bing convinced that purchasing needs to be more holistic led me to also specialise in human rights and to co-develop bespoke assessments: not as a compliance exercise, but as a business approach to better understand suppliers & workers realities while giving them a voice, strengthen partnerships, reduce risks and build more robust supply chains.
Since 2015, I have been helping organisations build more robust supply chains through responsible purchasing, supplier engagement and practical, field-based solutions.
Today, while based in Thailand, I continue to support organisations across Asia and Europe with the same curiosity, pragmatism and passion for the field that first brought me to this region more than twenty years ago.
