Providing Sustainability Reporting Advice to Seasalt

Seasalt makes quality, durable clothing and accessories. Founded in 1981, the company has grown to become one of Cornwall’s largest employers. Seasalt is committed to reducing the impact of their business on their communities and the environment, and to being transparent with stakeholders about their progress. 

The Challenge 

Seasalt recognised that it needed support to build on its reporting work to date. Previous reports had varied in tone and length and hadn’t sufficiently targeted expert – as opposed to consumer – audiences. 

The Seasalt team were keen to make their next report more robust and to ensure it was in line with emerging legislation and the changing expectations of key stakeholders. Aware they wanted this report to be “more Seasalt” but unsure how to go about it, they engaged Junxion to provide sustainability reporting expertise. 

While Junxion has a long track record in sustainability report consulting and writing, this project was explicitly about building Seasalt’s capacity by working with and developing their internal resources. 

How We Helped 

We began by looking at peer sustainability reports and interviewing staff to gain a deeper understanding of the business and what they wanted to achieve with this year’s report. This resulted in a set of recommendations that reflected both Seasalt’s ambitions and Junxion’s deep knowledge of reporting practice. 

We worked with the Seasalt team to review all their activities and performance across the year and provided them with a detailed wireframe and structure for the content. 

When the Seasalt writers had produced the first draft following the structure, Junxion reviewed the copy and provided detailed feedback on how to improve it. Throughout the project, we were careful to ensure that Seasalt had ownership of overall report production. 

Measuring Success 

Junxion’s deep reporting expertise guiding the project resulted in a rigorous, well-structured report that targeted expert audiences. Having an external pair of eyes review the content helped ensure that it was engagingly written and that the key messages came through successfully. 

Our deliberately inclusive, consensus-building approach was key to the success of the project. Exploring peoples’ ambitions and concerns about sustainability reporting at the outset and including them throughout the process helped ensure the final report was embraced by the organisation. Having external experts present awkward truths was an effective way to manage potential friction. The process has resulted in a strong report this year and increased Seasalt’s future impact reporting capacity. 

You can review the report here.