The push for total supply chain transparency and operational efficiency is entering a high-speed era, as evidenced by three recent announcements. First, TrusTrace has unveiled its “One Retail Hub,” a free AI-powered platform that is already helping fashion brands such as Zalando and ASOS cut compliance reporting times by 70 percent.
Meanwhile, the logistics sector is getting a much-needed accuracy boost as CargoX and TradeSun launch a blockchain-integrated AI layer to eliminate the errors that plague 34 percent of customs declarations. In the world of e-commerce, Foundry Brands said it is rewriting the playbook for portfolio management by tapping Cart.com to handle the heavy lifting of Amazon operations, allowing their internal teams to focus strictly on brand equity and product innovation.
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TrusTrace’s New “One Retail Hub” Slashing Compliance Reporting Time by 70 percent for Fashion Brands
TrusTrace, a platform for supply chain traceability, has announced significant early success for its new “One Retail Hub,” which is a free industry infrastructure designed to streamline supply chain compliance. The company said seven weeks after its launch, fashion brands utilizing the platform are reporting an average time savings of 70 percent on compliance reporting.
The company said this signals a major shift in how the industry handles regulatory demands.
The platform was developed to address the growing burden of global regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Previously, brands have been forced to navigate fragmented, repetitive data requests from various retailers, often rebuilding the same compliance responses from scratch. It was inefficient and time consuming.
One Retail Hub solves this by providing a shared digital infrastructure where brands can complete a single, unified assessment and share it instantly across multiple retail partners.
Built in collaboration with seven major retailers, including Zalando, ASOS, and About You, the hub uses advanced AI to simplify the process. The AI analyzes a brand’s existing documentation to auto-populate responses, which has reduced the time required to complete a retailer’s assessment from several weeks to just a few days.
Fanny Ekholm, CSR Manager at Didriksons, said the interface allows teams to work from “a single source of truth” rather than duplicating efforts. This sentiment was echoed by Charlotte Risskov Kræfting of ECCO, who described the platform as a “genuine time-saver” because the AI finds existing answers within documentation rather than requiring users to reconstruct them.
At the core of the platform is the “Retailer Brand Due Diligence Questionnaire,” which the company describes as a unified framework that was developed alongside experts from Cascale and Fair Wear. Beyond data collection, the platform offers real-time scoring and tailored recommendations, transforming raw compliance data into a roadmap for sustainability improvements.
David Reiner, ethical sourcing lead at Zalando, said that making the platform free ensures that progress in sustainability is a shared industry standard rather than a competitive advantage for only the largest players.
Hrishikesh Rajan, co-founder of TrusTrace, said in a statement that the platform specifically helps small and medium-sized enterprises by eliminating the duplicative reporting burdens that previously strained their resources. By offering this infrastructure free of charge, TrusTrace aims to accelerate industry-wide progress toward transparency and accountability.
As regulatory pressure continues to intensify, TrusTrace is encouraging brands of all sizes to join the hub. For companies looking for even deeper insights, the hub can be integrated into TrusTrace’s full enterprise platform for comprehensive upstream supplier engagement and supply chain traceability.
Foundry Brands Taps Cart.com to Manage Amazon Channel Operations
Cart.com announced that Foundry Brands, a private equity-backed multi-brand consumer platform that acquires and operates e-commerce brands, has selected its platform to manage Amazon channel operations across four brands in its portfolio. The company said under the agreement, Cart.com “will assume responsibility for day-to-day Amazon execution, while Foundry retains ownership of brand strategy, product direction, channel architecture and P&L accountability.”
Christian Chopra, chief executive officer of Foundry Brands, said in a statement that Amazon is a scale channel, not a place to experiment. “At Foundry, our teams prioritize building strong brands, better products and experiences customers genuinely value. That work requires focus. Cart.com brings the operational rigor and category expertise to run Amazon with consistency, so we can stay committed to creating long-term brand value across the portfolio.”
Cart.com said the partnership covers: Blu Atlas, a men’s skincare and grooming brand; Supply, a shaving and grooming essentials brand; Benevolence LA, a home and wellness brand offering candles, fragrances and accessories; and Craft & Kin, a home fragrance brand focused on candles and scent-driven décor.
Omair Tariq, founder and CEO at Cart.com, said Foundry “has a clear operating model for how Amazon should perform across its portfolio. Our role is to apply disciplined execution, category expertise and scalable systems to run the channel with consistency and accountability.”
Tariq said this approach allows Foundry’s teams “to stay focused on building brands, while Amazon performs as a reliable growth and contribution engine.”
To optimize its multi-brand portfolio, Foundry said it has evolved its operating model by decoupling strategic brand ownership from channel execution, a transition highlighted by an expanded partnership with Cart.com as of late 2025. This structure allows Foundry to maintain internal control over product development, brand direction, and unit economics through a lean strategy team, while leveraging Cart.com as a specialist extension to manage the complexities of Amazon operations at scale.
By consolidating functions such as catalog management, listing optimization, and retail compliance under a single expert partner, Foundry aims to replace a large internal infrastructure with a more efficient system designed to drive consistent growth, maximize revenue, and reduce operating costs across its diverse Amazon business.
CargoX and TradeSun Launch Blockchain-Integrated Document Validation
CargoX and TradeSun have announced the launch of “Document Validation,” which the companies described as a first-of-its-kind integrated verification layer designed to eliminate document errors before they reach customs or financial institutions. By combining TradeSun’s agentic AI with CargoX’s blockchain-based platform, the solution aims to slash cargo clearance delays and administrative rework that currently plague the supply chain.
The complexity of international commerce is staggering. According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a single customs transaction typically involves up to 30 parties, 40 documents, and 200 data elements — 30 percent of which are repeated dozens of times. This redundancy leads to a high margin for error; studies show that customs declarations contain an average of 34 percent errors, causing significant operational disruptions and unexpected costs.
“We have reduced what was a complex, multi-step manual process to a single-click validation,” said Nigel Hook, founder and CEO of TradeSun. “TradeSun’s digital agents do the work, so customers don’t have to.”
The new Document Validation tool acts as an intelligent checkpoint, now available to the more than 160,000 companies using CargoX across 190 countries. The companies said in a statement that the system functions by performing automatic pre-departure checks to verify document consistency before filing, utilizing TradeSun’s AI agents to analyze data patterns and ensure absolute compliance.
By leveraging CargoX’s blockchain infrastructure to provide a secure, immutable record of every validated document, the partnership enables a seamless handoff of clean submissions to importers, brokers, banks, and authorities alike.
The initial release is strategically targeted to support Egypt’s Advance Cargo Information (ACI) filings, a critical requirement for sea and air freight entering the country. Moving forward, the companies said the partnership plans to expand functionality to include bank document presentations and other specialized customs submissions.
“As submission volumes continue to grow, the risk of errors increases,” said Peter Kern, vice president of commercial at CargoX. “Leveraging TradeSun’s agentic AI helps mitigate this risk, enabling new levels of secure, reliable, and efficient trade.”
