"A Morningstar for Manufacturing"

(Article taken from the Next Innovation section of Fast Company, March 2009 issue)

Panjiva brings intelligent search and better information to the fashion industry's hunt for suppliers. It all began when Josh Green needed a component supplier in China for an electronics firm that he had been working for. With this special assignment it struck Green the lack of information and transparency available to sourcing professionals

Realizing this need, Green sat down with his friend James Posta, a computer scientist at MIT. Posta felt he could design software that would do for importing [of information] what Google has done for the Web: make search smarter. So in 2006, the duo founded Panjiva. They began with the apparel industry and gathered data from more than 200 sources- governments, private certifiers, not-for-profits. Then they digitized, cleaned, and collated the obtained data to create detailed snapshots of more than 70,000 suppliers, with each being rated from 1 to 100, based on criteria such as the supplier's environmental record and experience serving the U.S. market.

The company charges for database subscriptions and sells reports on individual suppliers. Panjiva has attracted a roster of stellar, diverse fashion icons including Diane von Furstenburg along with almost 90 apparel companies, such as Elie Tahari, J.Crew, Reebok, and Wal-Mart. Green and Psota never intended for their business to be fashion-only and are hoping to broaden their database to include other industries. In fact, Green has had discussions with brands in several other industries including food, housewares, and office supplies and he expects Panjiva's database to eventually have profiles of several million suppliers in a wide array of industries. The keystone to success for Panjiva is trustworthiness- if even one rating is incorrect or bogus it could potentially cause their reputation to plummet.

This article is important to me because as an apparel major, I need to stay up to date to know the latest in trends within the fashion supply chain.