Sourcery today announced that Rui Fontoura, leading fibre & raw material sourcing expert, is joining the global sourcing platform as Global Brand Engagement Director. He is charged with engaging brands, retailers, and global importers to drive more transparency, shared responsibility, collaboration, and traceability in their cotton value chains – transforming trade for good through Sourcery’s Direct-to-Grower™ programme.
Before joining Sourcery, Rui Fontoura led Textile Exchange’s Fiber & Materials Strategy for Cotton & Crops. Prior to that, he implemented Burberry’s raw material sourcing strategy across the value chain focusing on sustainable and organic cotton transparency and traceability. Applying over 20 years of experience in high-level positions in global sourcing and manufacturing in the fashion industry across Europe, Southeast Asia and North Africa, Rui Fontoura is committed to guiding brands and retailers to take a more active position in ensuring the quality, integrity and impact they make through their sustainable cotton commitments – being at the fore front along with their supply chain partners to deliver more to growers and to the fibre they produce through Sourcery’s Direct-to-Grower™ programme.
Crispin Argento, Managing Director and Co-Founder of the Sourcery: “Rui is a proven innovator and leader and has the needed experience, knowledge, and gravitas to help brands and retailers turn ambition into action building transparent and collaborative value chains that drive market transformation at scale. Too often, the leading voices of sustainable cotton have not spent much time on a cotton farm, in a factory, or have worked as buyers in an international brand. Rui brings a diversity of experience, understands commercial pressures, and speaks the language of the trade, which is needed to build trust across the entire value chain.”
