Following the success of the initial session at the beginning of November, in which more than 40 Leather Cluster Barcelona members took part, the shared value and corporate sustainability project, promoted and funded by ACCIÓ and coordinated by the specialist R4S Group, has continued to make progress in recent months. Specifically, two further working sessions have been held, the latest this January.

The first of these two, which took place at Adoberia Bella at the end of November, was an interesting working session on shared value in the leather sector, in which objectives and benchmark cases were discussed and a working dynamic was established on the business opportunities for generating shared value in the leather industry.

In the second session, held on Tuesday 16 January, Leather Cluster Barcelona members were introduced to the B Impact Assessment evaluation tool (a B Corp tool) and the tool’s areas relating to governance and customers were explained in greater depth.

The B Corp tool is free of charge and helps to make an initial diagnosis of how mature different companies are in terms of sustainability.

During the session, the success story of an organisation already certified as a B Corp was presented: the family business founded in 1975, Camper. The heads of sustainability and of quality and the environment at the Mallorcan footwear brand, Leticia Sandoval and Cristina Pons, explained that they are proud to be a company with B Corporation certification, thus forming part of a group of companies committed to creating a positive impact for people and the planet.

Camper explained how B Corp certification has helped them draw up a road map to strengthen their positive impact as an organisation and has allowed them to align their values even more closely with their business mission. Camper, which requires Leather Working Group certification from all its leather suppliers, believes that all companies have a responsibility to generate a positive impact and states that the B Corp certification process has shown them how to focus their strategy and where to introduce immediate changes in order to keep improving.

This shared value and corporate sustainability project, promoted and funded by ACCIÓ, will continue until April with new working sessions. Both the Roots for Sustainability (R4S) agency that coordinates the project and Leather Cluster Barcelona are very satisfied with how the working meetings are going and with the involvement of the cluster’s members in them.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is a competitive cooperation environment for promoting cross-cutting, transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving forward the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector. The cluster is an accredited body within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of ACCIÓ.