From field to fabric: BESTSELLER’s partnership with CmiA Organic

When ONLY — one of BESTSELLER’s flagship denim brands — set out to source more of its cotton from verified, traceable origins, it turned to Cotton made in Africa (CmiA). The partnership that followed is now in its third year, built around traceability, direct farmer relationships, and a shared focus on smallholder communities South of the Sahara.

BESTSELLER has been a CmiA licensing partner since 2023, when ONLY began sourcing CmiA Organic cotton for its denim collections. In just two years, the brand has more than doubled the volume of organic cotton sourced from African smallholder farmers verified under the CmiA Organic standard.

The decision to prioritise CmiA Organic was driven by more than logistics or fibre quality, though both played a role. African organic cotton is hand-picked and typically long-stapled, making it well suited to the high-quality denim fabrics ONLY produces at partner mills in Egypt and Pakistan.

For BESTSELLER, a key criterion was that the standard should have genuine ground-level impact on farming communities — not only set requirements, but actively support farmers in meeting them. CmiA’s model, which centres on the social and economic development of African smallholder farmers, aligned with that expectation.

In 2023, Jonas Meier Sørensen, ONLY’s buying manager for denim, travelled to Tanzania to visit CmiA Organic cotton fields.

What BESTSELLER is working towards is its commitment to direct-to-farm relationships, a strategy led by Danique Lodewijks, raw materials manager at BESTSELLER. In an industry where supply chains can be deeply layered and farm-level data difficult to obtain, BESTSELLER is working to close the gap between brand and grower.

“The direct-to-farm model enables us to develop strategic, season-long plans with stakeholders throughout the value chain, working from one harvest to the next,” says Danique. This approach allows BESTSELLER to source organic cotton with high integrity, support farming communities economically, and improve traceability.

The logic is straightforward: full traceability back to raw material producers is essential for obtaining reliable location data at sub-national level. Without it, sustainability claims remain difficult to verify and sourcing locations can shift unpredictably from season to season. By building season-long relationships directly with farmers and their communities, BESTSELLER aims to create more consistent conditions for quality, stable supply, and more verifiable sourcing data.

BESTSELLER plans to continue expanding this model, particularly as evolving legislative requirements across Europe create stronger incentives for brands to go beyond conventional sourcing practices.

“We have developed a holistic sustainability strategy that works with nature to shift from an extractive material production system to a model that supports supply chain resilience and that benefits communities,” says Danique.

For CmiA, BESTSELLER represents the kind of long-term partner that is needed for gradual, credible progress in the industry: one that is willing to invest, to travel, to adapt, and to stay.